Eclipse on the lost lovers
by Kammyh
Summary: Four years have passed from the disaster with the 456, but is the Torchwood team really back? Guilt and grief are still keeping them from going on with their lives. New beginnings only bring dead ends. What they need is hope, what they need is the knowledge that in the end everything will turn out all right. JANTO
1. Graveyard

Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, no copyright infringement intended. If you still want to sue, first bring Ianto back to Jack.

Warnings: Spoilers for almost everything except novels and comics. Not beta-read and English is not my native language, but beta-tested by SOY (this means she happily bounced on the idea of reading a Torchwood fix-it and while she read it she sometimes glared at me pointing out missing commas, subjects and _that_ disappearances and _–ing_ misplacements)

A/N: After lots of crying over how fucked up CoE/The end of time ended, I thought that writing a fiction was a wonderful idea to get the depression out of my system. It didn't work, but I still hope you will enjoy it. The story is already finished and since there won't be any beta-reading waiting you will see the end of this, don't worry.

**Graveyard**

The wind kept humming its soft tune racing through the trees of the cold graveyard. The grey sky hovered over the tombstones damp of humidity and forecasting the imminent rain, but none of the three people standing close next to each other could bring themselves to care.

It has been a month since they came back from another USA parenthesis and everything was changing again. Jack had disappeared once more, talking about bringing back the real Torchwood Cardiff, and Gwen was left with Rhys and little Anwen wondering if that meant she still had a job. When they had met again and the captain had suggested with a fake smile on his face that they should go say hello to their co-workers, the others simply knew that it wasn't going to end well.

Four years had passed since Ianto's death and some more time from Owen and Tosh's, but the pain was still there. Even though Gwen and Rhys had managed to find a way to stop thinking about it constantly, it was also well known to them all that Jack's heart was still deeply bleeding over Ianto, no matter how much he tried to get over it.

Quick shags, attempted random love stories, work and alien invasions couldn't do a thing to stitch up that wound. It was there, in the minutes he thought he was alone and he let his mind simply wander, his eyes lost and out of focus. Sometimes tears glistened his eyes, sometimes his lips tightened fighting the urge to cry, sometimes he laughed remembering something only to shake his head seconds after, knowing that there was no way that could came back in his life.

What was happening in front of their eyes right now, however, was even worse than what had become a reality they didn't want to get used to. The horror depicted on Jack's face as he stared at Ianto's tombstone had no way to be described and, as even Gwen had to admit after all those years, no way to be healed.

"It's so sad thinkin' Tosh and Owen are not even 'ere. Makes you actually think coming 'ere is a waste of energy."

Rhys's cheerless words felt like a painful stab in Gwen's heart and a single tear fell, marring her cheek. She was certain she had already gotten over their deaths, why did it still hurt so much? Was it the sad atmosphere of the graveyard? As she took a deep breath, anyway, it clicked and words flew out by themselves.

"When the hub exploded… nothing in the morgue survived. Tosh, Suzie, Owen's things… The hub was their home…"

More tears came flooding and she couldn't find it in herself to continue. She hid her eyes in her hands and began crying freely. Rhys was quick to take her in his arms, gripping her firmly and caressing her head, slightly hoping to bring her a little bit of comfort.

"We try and begin new lives, we run away, we change everything over and over again… And in the end the loss is always there." Jack stated with what was supposed to be a cool tone, even though it was already beginning to crack. "Maybe that's why we kept them in the morgue… to pretend they were still there with us… To have a chance to see them again and again, because even after you say everything, even after you are sure that a last glance is all you needed… It goddamn, just keeps hurting."

It was easy to understand that what had begun like a general thought in the end had turned out to be an explicit reference to Ianto. Gwen turned quickly towards Jack, ready to be there to comfort him if needed, but with Jack in such a state it was difficult decide what was the most proper course of action.

Even though his eyes were red and watery, not a single tear was falling. That could have been good news if it had meant he had already shed enough tears for Ianto, but something told her that he simply had no more. Both husband and wife stared at him unsurely, earning a bitter laugh from Jack as soon as he noticed them.

"I already cried too much over him and I've no reason to keep going. He wanted me to don't forget him, but he would have never wanted me to keep grieving. I owe him that much…" Jack's neutral tone was barely a strangled whisper near the end and his whole complexion morphed in a mask of pain and grief. "And I can't even give him that. It still… hurts too much…"

Gwen swallowed the lump that seemed to constrict her throat and reached for his shoulder. Jack placed his own hand on top of hers and they closed up the space between them, trying to give and receive comfort from one another just like that.

Rhys watched them, not entirely sure about what he could do to help his wife and her best friend, yet he understood that they didn't need _words_ right now. They were too far gone in their grief. The 'great' idea to have a new Torchwood experience far away from Cardiff, and begin a new life overseas had only proven how stupid it was to keep running away. Nevertheless, leaving Anwen with her grandparents for the day to make this trip to the graveyard as a way to gain enough courage to fight for their future wasn't the greatest idea they had ever had.

Maybe facing the end to have the strength to move towards a new beginning was good enough only for written novels. It hadn't worked after Tosh and Owen's deaths and much less after Ianto's, so there was no hope such a childish notion could begin working now.

"He wasn't done," Rhys managed to say after some time, gaining the attention of Gwen and Jack, both barely seeing him through watery eyes. "That's why Ianto hurts more than the others."

Gwen looked at her husband like he had grown another head. "So you mean that Tosh and Ow-"

"I never said that!" He interrupted hastily. "But from what you told me Owen hated to be left 'undead'… and Tosh, well, I think her hopes died with him that day, if she'd loved him that much. Ianto on the other hand was just beginning to form some sort of actual relationship with Jack and… well, Gwennie, I think he still was barely ready to open up to you. He's always been the mysterious fella in your tales the times you mentioned him. Always polite, always sweet... "_You can trust 'im with everythin'_" but just that! To you it was nothin' more, love… And just when you had the chance to know 'im better…this 'appens."

Rhys gestured towards Ianto's grave, making both of the others look back at the cold tombstone with Ianto's name written over it. For a long moment they stood frozen in place and stared at it, their breath stopping in their lungs.

"This might be true, Rhys." Jack assumed trying to sound half the detached person he wanted to be and freeing himself from Gwen's hug. "But we still can't reverse it. We have to keep protecting the Earth… _the way_ he would have wanted us to, and _from where_ he would have wanted us to."

"But the hub near Cardiff's bay-"

"Some renovations had been made." Jack interrupted Rhys curtly. "Now everything is exactly the way it was, the way it was supposed to be. I also managed to get some of our things back from Torchwood two… Even the morgue will soon be functioning properly again."

Jack moved away from the tombstones and towards the car park, but both Gwen and Rhys took a moment more before following him.

That day the 456 had taken away everything from Jack –his past, making him sacrifice his own grandson and in doing so destroying the last bit of relationship he still had with his daughter; his present, made of Torchwood, the hub, a work he liked even when it was difficult and unappreciated by the others. His future, a relationship with Ianto that was only beginning to rise to the surface after all the years he had kept his heart frozen.

Even Gwen had realized the strength of the commitment grown between the two men, and she knew that even though Jack was still trying to not admit it, he had known deep inside that he had already fallen for his lover way beyond what he had signed up for when they first began their relationship.

She could not be certain of it, but she was sure that it played the biggest part of the reasons why Jack couldn't forgive himself. _That_ was what was eating him alive: to know that not only he had brought Ianto with him at the Thames House, causing his demise, but he had also been too scared to fully live a relationship that had been there waiting for him.

He had presumably all eternity before himself, but Ianto had much less, especially with him being part of Torchwood. Jack knew it, but to act on it would have only made the decaying things around him _real_ and he wasn't ready to confront that again. Ianto's death, however, had made him have to do exactly that.

Gwen doubted time would ever heal something like that, no matter how many billion years you have in front of yourself.

"Rhys… I think he's getting worse…" She whispered to her husband, walking even more slowly.

"The experience overseas made it worse I suppose… Do you think he means to bring Ianto in the morgue to have him next to him?"

"Four years passed… I don't think he actually believes the body is still intact."

"If he wants Ianto to give 'im strength, bones will do for 'im, Gwennie. He looks even more broken now than he was before."

Gwen took a deep breath and then exhaled. "You know, Owen and I never believed Ianto when he said Jack needed him. Rhiannon was right, we didn't know him at all. And what makes me think is… we didn't even know Jack as well as we thought back then."

Remembering Rhiannon's cold words when she'd had to tell her Ianto was dead still hurt so much that she had to stop walking altogether. The guilt was too much to bear: two years working together and she hadn't actually known more than a bunch of lies amongst the fact that he loved Jack, making coffee and keeping things clean.

"It's not your fault, Gwen." Jack joined the conversation despite Gwen and Rhys's surprise. "And when you think about it, it was not even Ianto's."

He stopped to turn and face her. Just how much of the conversation had the captain actually heard?

"He was trying to protect his family, just like you tried to protect Rhys at the beginning. Obviously for him it was much easier not living with them."

"But you knew about his family, Jack…and he lied to you too all the same. Owen told me he overheard you two the day me and Rhys were-"

"His father is a whole different problem." Jack butted in, already understanding what she was talking about. He took a deep breath and resumed his walk towards the car before continuing. "When he is at work he can pretend his father was someone he was not. We have to grant him that…"

Jack closed his eyes and sighed tiredly, realizing he was speaking like Ianto was still there. Now he really had to question his own sanity. "I mean… when he was at work he could pretend- Let's stop talking about it. Please. I-I can't keep doing this anymore."

Gwen nodded and let Rhys hug her shoulders tenderly as they reached the dark SUV that was waiting for them. A sad smile ghosted on Jack's lips as he traced the name Torchwood written over it in carved letters, before he finally moved on and opened the door to take the driver's seat.

"I-I didn't notice… The SUV looks identical too." Gwen muttered now extremely worried. 'Everything identical' 'From where Ianto wanted it' 'The way he wanted it'. In his memory. What had began as a doubt in her police detective mind now was an alarming certainty, even though she had no real proof yet. She hastened to open the passenger door to meet Jack face to face.

"Jack I need to know! Tell me you're planning to start anew and not just to build a mausoleum for Ianto! You said so yourself. He wanted you to keep going on with your life!"

"A mausoleum for me? Actually Gwen's right, I don't need it."

The voice froze Gwen and Jack on the spot. They kept staring horrified at one another, not actually having the willpower to turn to check the source of the voice. Did it really belong to the one person they were missing the most? What were the chances that it really was their Ianto? An alien wearing his skin like a suit, a shape shifter, a ghost… or the kindest of all: the guilt and the grief had finally taken over their minds and they had gone crazy.

Some sort of communication passed between the two best friends and they both swallowed as Gwen began counting. "Three…two…"

"And one" Finished Jack turning slowly, not yet daring to hope that the Welshman he missed so much was _there_.

Except there he was. Smiling his knowing smile while he stared at them, arms crossed over the car bonnet and with ruffled sun-kissed hair.

"You look like you've seen a ghost." The newcomer teased with mirth. "You missed me?"

Gwen and Jack both exited the car, not daring to take their eyes away from the man as they took in his figure. The newcomer looked exactly like their Ianto: from the wavy hair to the striped suit and red shirt he loved to wear. The only thing that actually seemed a little bit off was his apparent age. Ianto had died at 26…even though they considered the four years that had passed from Thames House, now he would have been 30, whilst the man in front of them looked at least five years older.

Rhys stopped Gwen and held her securely in his arms, the fear for her safety somehow winning over his own shock. She didn't complain: everything needed to be left to Jack.

"Who are you?"

Ianto's smile wavered a bit, settling for one of sad acknowledgement. "You are ready to build a mausoleum for me, but you can't recognize my face?"

"He's dead." Jack managed to whisper, his voice disappearing amongst the anger to be played at and the joy to see his lover again. "I saw him dying. I saw him in the House of the Dead, he-you _can't_ be alive."

Ianto just kept looking at him, waiting evenly like he always did when someone had to process his words. It was so familiar that Jack tentatively found himself reaching out to touch his cheek, even though he knew he did not trust himself enough to achieve the intent.

"There's no way you can be him." Jack's voice was nothing more than a strangled cry, but even though his whole soul screamed for it, he couldn't close the few inches between his hand and Ianto's cheek.

Jack's shields were already down. The chance of having Ianto back was a treat too sweet to make him stay rational about the whole situation. Gwen knew that in the end he would give in, but even though her own hopes were high as well, she felt the need to warn her friend anyhow. Maybe saying that aloud would made her believe that it was wise doubting the newcomer a little bit more.

"Jack… don't…" Other than that she couldn't manage much. She wanted the man to be their Ianto so much that this was hurting her too. She found herself _needing_ to believe that man was Ianto. To finally repair Jack's soul, but also to give her a chance to change how things had been between the two of them. To actually talk, let their truths out… _that_ was the only thing that could have actually helped them have a new beginning.

She had to consider that if this was an actual enemy though, it had played well, choosing the right moment, the right place and the right people. If this was a trick of a foe it well deserved its victory.

In the end it was Ianto who made his move. He sighed, giving Jack one of those adoring smile he reserved only for him and took the lingering hand in his own, kissing its palm and bringing it to caress his cheek to prove he was real.

"How does it feel, Jack?"

Jack had to swallow and search for some strength inside himself to not jump on the newcomer. He had forgotten what touching Ianto meant to him: electricity, need, lust, love. Reason never existed between them, it was always passion enhanced at its maximum level, a rush of hormones and perfect, warm understanding. The way they communicated with their bodies gave them the same amount of awareness that hours discussing feelings could give to others.

What was there, lingering between them at the beginning, had only grown when they had become lovers. Jack had realized years before that such a strong connection was one of the reasons why he couldn't bear to let Ianto touch him at the very beginning… if it turned out to be unrequited love it would have been impossible for him to keep the boy around.

Those feelings… only Ianto could generate them inside of him. A need to be close so carnal, so _visceral_ that it was impossible to ignore. Those feelings that had kept him searching again for his employee even after their first time together, those feelings that had bounded him to protect the Earth with passion and a smile over his lips and not just to bide his time, those feelings that for a brief moment in time had made him believe he could have been a hero too.

And there they were.

The same sparkle, the same warm force inside of him telling him Ianto was the one he wanted to be near to. His own body's way to tell him he was touching the same person he shared many experiences with maybe.

"How do you do that?" Jack whispered to him, pretending to still doubt Ianto even when his body and soul had already given in and he was unconsciously stroking the cheek under his hand.

"What you are feeling is not your memory playing tricks on you." Ianto complained, trying to go for a cold and offended tone at being doubted. That was supposed to at least shake Jack out of his memories, but not even the mildly annoyed voice was quite achieving it. Instead the Welshmen was rewarded with the ghost of a smile.

"You get angry just like him, too… Gods, I'd never think I would have missed him angry."

Conversely that was enough to make the other two spectators react. Rhys had never seen Ianto angry, whilst Gwen had to make a face at Jack's remark, mostly because the only times she had actually seen Ianto angry were during Lisa's turmoil and when John Hart had buried Jack back in time: none of those were experiences she cherished.

In both of those occasions Ianto had been dangerous for her too, even though he was her teammate. It was enough to make her find enough strength to reach for her gun with her shaking hand and point it towards the newcomer. Rhys followed suit.

"Leave him alone… Leave _us_ alone!" Gwen cried, trying to stop her hands from trembling. Whether it was the real Ianto or a false Ianto, this whole ordeal was too much to bear right after the grieving at the graveyard. And Ianto was scary when angry. She hadn't missed that particular mean and desperate side of him.

"I'm sorry if my lies hurt you, Gwen." Ianto told her, letting Jack's hand go. "But you and I we'll have the chance to explain ourselves in three months. Until then you just have to trust me the way you would trust your teammate… Former teammate actually at the moment."

Those words gained the attention of everyone, and also Jack managed to somewhat snap out of his memories.

"You're right to believe I'm not your Ianto" He tried to explain. "Because I… Well actually I am and am _not_ your Ianto at the same time…"

Realizing he was just confusing his friends and lover along with himself, Ianto rolled his eyes at his poor choice of words and took a long breath while searching for the proper way to explain things.

"Let's go back to the hub, first. You check me up, and then I'll explain. What about that?"

"You won't go anywhere, mate." Rhys argued, still holding a trembling Gwen close to him. "That hub doesn't need wreckin' right now."

"Try us first." Jack offered plainly, out of the initial confusion enough to understand that Rhys was right, but at the same time realizing that all they needed to be certain this Ianto was their real teammate was at the hub. "Then we'll bring you to the hub and check you up."

Surprisingly, Ianto answered by teasing him with a flirty grin.

"Still no quality kit in the back of the SUV?"

It was too familiar to let it go, and Jack simply laughed feeling the tension disappear as work of magic and leaving the married couple wondering what kind of joke could have been to manage to have them getting a glimpse of the old Jack back.

"If you are really Ianto, I swear to you I'll finally put those damn pterodactyl nets in the back of the SUV."

Now it was time for Ianto to laugh, breaking the cool and flirty mask in favour of a more casual and more familiar stance.

"You're planning to move to London then? Torchwood Cardiff's too small for you?"

"_Never_."

Jack searched for Ianto's eyes, sadness quickly coming back and rebuilding a wall between the two of them. It was so thick that in a short while they couldn't bear to look at each other anymore.

Ianto fidgeted nervously, realizing this was the moment to spill the beans and hope the others believed him. Again the same old song: _bloody beans_. At least this time he didn't have to wait for them to be ready.

"In three months, you will receive… well, a gift from an old friend… I cannot say more, I'm sorry. You three…Well, four actually. You four will have lots of things to talk about. You will have your chance to rebuild either friendship or love with me… with him. I've already done it in my past, and I swear it will be hard, but… explanations are the only way we can build a new Torchwood. The strongest Torchwood ever maybe."

A tentative smile tugged at his lips, and he was pleased to see a similar one on Jack and Gwen faces too.

"They need us. The earth will always need us for small and big things. We have got to be ready… and _my_ Torchwood is ready right now, that's why I'm here."

"So… You came here from the future." Jack summarized, not absolutely certain about how to deal with the information. The future self of someone he knew to be dead. Things couldn't get messier.

Ianto nodded. "I know I'm a ghost of the past from your future, but do you think you can cope with me to save the world one more time?"

Something in Ianto's manners eventually did it, and Gwen lowered her gun securing it in the waistband of her jeans, whilst Jack simply reached for Ianto's cheek, stroking it adoringly.

"I don't deserve you coming back for me. You should be sleeping and resting your soul, not be here in this sad world and put yourself in danger again."

Ianto shook his head and stared in his eyes, trying to resist the urge to yield to his heart's desire and kiss him, swallowing the lump in his throat to keep his voice from wavering.

"I've still got three months to sleep, that's more than enough. Give me three more months, Jack, and I'll come back for you."

"Didn't you miss me at all!?" Jack snapped, his voice strangled by the grief, finally giving in to the need to throw his arms around his lover, effectively crushing the cold façade both of them were pretending to have. Ianto drowned in Jack's warm embrace, desperately holding him tight and resting his cheek against Jack's, inhaling deeply his scent.

"Three months…" Ianto whispered softly, trying to convince himself more than anyone else. "I'll be gone soon and I can't do this to you. I can't take you away from myself."

"We… we need to get you… to the hub." Gwen managed to say in between the shivers that were shaking her body now that the initial stress relieved. She couldn't say what definitely gave him away, but in front of their need for one another, the realization that the man could have only been Ianto won over the rational part of her mind that was still trying to anchor her to reality.

Ianto and Jack parted, even though the older man seemed still rather lost and incapable to deal with the loss of warmth that he was finally feeling again after all those years. Ianto on the other hand simply smiled back at Gwen. One of his rare smile that made her understand that they where sincerely one team, no matter the secrets and the lies between them. She finally jumped out of Rhys's arms and threw herself at her friend, holding him tight and burying her hands in his hair.

"Oh, my god, sweetheart! It's really you… Please, tell me it's true, love."

Ianto laughed mirthlessly at Gwen's behaviour and held her tight. "You will be soon out of endearing terms if this keeps going."

Gwen let him go to look at him sternly in the eyes and smiled at him, not managing to muster the angry façade she had meant to present him with. "You, Ianto Jones, are the worst ever. I'll never run out of endearing terms for you and you will see it, darling."

Now Ianto's laugh was more genuine and she joined him, while leading his front to rest over hers. "We missed you, you dumb sod."

"We have things to talk about." Ianto said, still smiling at Gwen.

She nodded, her smile never fading. "Three months, is it right?"

Gwen waited for her friend to nod before going on. "You'd better keep your promise, because I'll be waiting for you."

Rhys watched the three teammates one by one, but he knew he couldn't voice his opinion. He had adored the boy and his coffee, but he had hardly known him well enough to recognize him without actual technical proofs. Heck, he hadn't even realized the boys had wanted the place for themselves when they were hiding back in London in Torchwood one facilities!

"Don't mind me. Don't worry. C'mon guys! Time for the real check up, test or whatever, now!" Said Rhys trying to be helpful instead of feeling overly excluded. "Before this ends in tears… I'll drive. We're ok, Jack?"

Jack looked at Rhys, still quite lost, and nodded, feeling in no shape to make decisions of his own at the moment. Ianto smiled sadly at his lover and placed one hand on his shoulder.

"Jack?"

"Maybe you've 'd better sit next to the driver, love?" Gwen smiled at Ianto, taking his free hand in hers. "You leave him with me for a while."

However Ianto would have none of it right now, and he simply kept his eyes on Jack.

"No, I'll stay with him." His rich voice coarse and broken. "Thank you for looking after him, Gwen, but he's once again my responsibility as long as I'm here."

Rhys gave a last glance to the three of them and then took the driver's seat, waiting for Gwen to sit at his side and for the other two to arrange themselves behind. Before long Jack nestled himself in Ianto's arms and fell asleep, his head resting on his shoulder.

As soon as Jack's breath evened, Ianto tiredly took a deep breath.

"Jack told me it would have been difficult, but this whole thing is heart-breaking." He said almost to himself after a while, caressing fondly his lover's hair.

"Couldn't he come 'ere too?" Gwen asked him, figuring he was talking about Jack's future self and not the one currently asleep at his side.

Ianto shook his head. "Time paradox. I could cross my own timeline only because… Well I'm still dead, you know. Besides you know me, so you would have trusted me better than a stranger… Everything considered, it seemed the best solution back then."

Gwen looked at him with her big eyes full of all the emotions she couldn't express in words. "It is."

Ianto gave her a sad smile before focusing back to his lover.

"I should go away now, so you can tell him it was just a dream. It would be nicer than give him back what he wanted only to steal it back from him again."

"But you'll be back." Gwen retorted, her voice weak and rough, yet a little more positive than before.

Ianto stared back at her considering her words, and then looked back at Jack's face. It looked visibly older and pained, but also like it was finally relaxed in what was probably one of his few restful sleeps in years.

He tightened his grip on Jack and kissed his front lightly to not wake him up.

"Bloody three months."

"He was already losing it, you know?" Gwen tried to cheer him up. "It was good for him to see you now."

Before Ianto could form any reply, the car stopped and Rhys told them they were finally at Cardiff Bay. Gwen was quick getting out of the car and running to open the door on Ianto's side, guessing the man would need help with their captain.

Unluckily, Ianto's attempt to pick him up bridal style awoke Jack, so the Welshmen simply waited for his lover to regain enough consciousness to remember what was happening before shocking him again with his presence.

"Gwen?" Jack called still half asleep and making both Ianto and Rhys shudder with a silent stab of jealousy.

Gwen reached for his shoulder, wondering if Jack was actually awoke enough to understand where he was. "What is it, Jack?"

"I dreamt him…" Jack answered, his voice trembling with pain. "I still can smell him… I'm going crazy again."

Both Ianto and Gwen smiled sweetly at him.

"Don't worry… You always took care of us. Now's time for us to do the same for you." She said punching him lightly on the shoulder. "So believe me: that wasn't a dream, Jack. He's here."

Gwen nodded in Ianto's direction beside Jack.

"Ianto?" Jack asked, realizing only then that he was actually leaning on his currently dead lover.

"As soon we finish with the tests I might make you some nice coffee, what about that? I trust that when you say that the hub is identical to how it was before, you were also including my perfect coffee machine."

Jack laughed off the tension and nodded, trying not to feel too much embarrassed by his deplorable state in public. Gwen and Ianto helped him out of the car, ready to catch him in case he fell over. Grief, stress and shock weren't usually recommendable together and surely their leader had had enough for the day.

"I'm fine guys, _really_." Jack told them, faking the most carefree expression he could muster. "And I count on that coffee later… Ianto."

"Yes, sir." Ianto answered playfully, gaining warm smiles from both his teammates.

"Good, back to our hub."

The four of them walked towards the tourist office. The former Torchwood team proceeded in front in one straight line, while Rhys followed them still eying Ianto suspiciously. Upon entering the hub though, Ianto stopped to stare at the flyers inside the tourist office. He quirked an eyebrow at one of them, and then went checking every single piece of paper, paling visibly as he read them over.

"What's up?" Gwen asked, unsure about the reason of his strange behaviour. "Signs of enemies approachin' already?"

"Too soon for that… We made sure of it." Answered Ianto as an afterthought, still staring the last of the flayers he was checking. "These flayers… are outdated."

Gwen laughed and closed the space between the two of them. "You're from the future! Of course they are outdated for you."

"That's not it!" Continued Ianto extremely worried. "None of these dates are from after my…death. I'd go as far as to say they were the same we had at the tourist centre when it exploded."

Gwen's face dried of all her emotions as she read over his shoulder and realized Ianto was right. All this added up proofs to her previous considerations.

"A mausoleum… for you." She muttered.

"What have I done!" Ianto tried to stop the tears from falling shaking his head, and pressed nervously a hand to cover his mouth. "That's all my fault."

"It's not your fault, love." Told him Gwen, trying to encircle his shoulders with her arm and pulling him towards her for comfort. "He tried to get over it –not forget you, sweetheart, only… to keep going the way he used to. But you know how things are when you are Torchwood. You think you've managed to take a breath, and in the end you realize that what you inhaled was dust, not air. And about everyone else…"

Gwen felt Ianto shudder in her arms, so she tried to relax him caressing his arm sweetly before continuing. "They simply weren't you. No one was ever enough to overthrow you, not even–"

"I know Gwen." He interrupted, his voice firm but warm, even though slightly rasp. "Save it for three months more, will you?"

"Are we ever going to be ok?" Gwen voice was a strangled cry, fearing Ianto's answer.

"I-I can't answer." Ianto explained in the same cold voice, but smiling at her nevertheless. "But everything is possible if your heart is in it."

"In three months," He continued plainly trying to regain control of his voice. "Lots of things are going to change, and lots of them will hurt…"

"But we're Torchwood." His words finally managed to bring the smile back to Gwen's lips. "We've survived worse."

"Yeah, we have."

Ianto offered courteously his arm to Gwen and she took it, both ready to finally re-enter their hub.


	2. Back to the hub

Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, no copyright infringement intended. If you still want to sue first bring Ianto back to Jack.

Warnings: Spoilers for almost everything except novels and comics. Not beta-read and English's not my native language, but beta-tested anyway by SOY

**Back to the hub**

Jack had been true to his words and everything had been rebuilt exactly the way it was before the USA parenthesis and before Thames House. The water tower was shining as it had never been destroyed in the first place and their computers were exactly how they had left them: from the manufacturer brand down to Tosh and Owen's photo next to the monitors. And after a long time the familiar cry of a pterodactyl welcomed them home.

"I thought Myfanwy was dead?" Gwen asked bewildered as she chased the pterodactyl with her eyes, her arm tightening around Ianto's in surprise.

"She was, couldn't save her." Jack explained, unbelievably excited as he was finally taking possess of his pride and joy after months of renovations. "But I found another one and named her the same."

With few long leaps he was in front of Ianto, smiling half heartedly at him. "Chocolate worked this time."

"I was a researcher. I knew what I was talking about." Ianto teased, smiling back, but then he knitted his brows together and gave Jack a reproachful scowl. "Nevertheless you have three months to make the hub look more like a '_big sci-fi underground base_' and less like a grave. After four years dead that's not what I'd like to see, I can assure you that."

Jack made his most displeased pout, trying to make peace with Ianto through his puppy eyes, thing that usually worked well enough to get him another cup of coffee when he already had way too many. "You want me to get rid of our Myfanwy too?"

Ianto smirked at him, released Gwen's arm and took Jack's face in his hand, leading their foreheads slowly together, never breaking the eye contact.

"Oh, no. The pterodactyl stays. You know I like her more than I like you."

Jack's lips tightened in a sort of smile and he closed his eyes, savouring the moment.

"You have no idea of how much I missed your jokes."

"Who said it was a joke." Ianto complained, closing his eyes too as he tried to keep the sensible side of his brain active and maintain his hormonal situation under control. Unfortunately, when Jack was involved, they were both impossible tasks. Not even the knowledge that he had another captain waiting for him back in the future could restrain Ianto's desire to heal this one too.

Broken Jack was most certainly his speciality, as well as one of the most significant reasons he had fallen so hard for the man.

"Three months… Three months and we'll have everything back, Jack. We'll just have to wait three months."

Jack nodded, but the uneasiness between them was still thick. It was like starving, and magically an all-you-can-eat buffet appeared in front of you along with someone who said "_Don't you dare to touch a thing_".

No need to say that in this case, despite the warnings, that particular someone would have been eaten along with the buffet. In more ways than one.

"You survived four years…" Another nod. Ianto gulped and opened his eyes, searching for Jack's still closed ones as he went on. "You can wait a little bit more for me, can't you? Will you wait for me, Jack?"

Jack opened his eyes and this time stared back at Ianto before nodding, not trusting his own voice. Rationally he knew that this made sense, but he had missed his Welshman, and the necessity to control himself when he was around him left his feelings and his connection with reality in total disarray.

Especially since the they were back at the hub. _Their_ hub.

The same hub where they had worked, laughed, flirted, played, joked and had loads of steaming sex.

Thinking about their base and their work made Jack unwillingly remember the reason they were there in the first place. The tests…The tests would help him distract himself from this dreamlike situation, finally making Ianto's coming back real, and the moment it became real, everything was going to develop into something more manageable than it currently was.

He could do without the kisses, without the wicked promises of guilty pleasures as soon as they were alone and even without the projects they would make together for the upcoming days both in work and private.

Jack had to swallow considering that.

Could he? Really? Somehow he thought it pretty much unlikely.

This was going to be hard. Pun intended.

Jack could feel Rhys watching them expectantly, but he realized he had no idea of which test would be proper in order to test Ianto and to be certain that they weren't dealing with an enemy. The fact that they had to check specifically Ianto produced lots of little problems, but also offered different 'ad hoc' alternatives.

Standard procedures could have been enough, but there were still chances that they would be faked or that they would result to be useless if he actually _was_ the same person, but he hid mean intentions. A clone for example, or a different dimension Ianto with improper agendas could easily set the values true even though he was lying about the reason for his visiting. However, they knew their real Ianto, and enough details _had_ to make some difference in this mess.

Jack took a deep breath as he considered his options. He needed to lead the team, like in the old days, he needed to find enough courage not only to risk to lose him again, but also to leave Ianto out of his sight even when the fear of him disappearing again was already testing his nerves and his patience.

Easier said than done, considering how out of practice he felt about the leading and how scared he was of another long-term parting from Ianto.

"Tests." Jack stated with one final tight lipped smile at Ianto, and he disappeared in the maze of the hub to search for the various machineries he needed, hoping to escape the unavoidable falling back in his dream-like memories that the Welshman called forth.

Ianto followed Jack out of habit with the intention of helping him through the preparations, but Rhys stopped him halfway.

"Sorry, mate. Can't have you touch the machineries."

"Oh. Right. Sure." Ianto faked one of his best smiles and properly took a seat on the nearest surface. "I'll wait here as a good boy."

Rhys knew deep inside himself that his Gwen and Jack weren't so easy to deceive, but he still felt that someone among them needed to keep a cool head in this matter. The former Torchwood team-members were both too much involved into this to keep themselves professional, that was why _he_ had to bear the burden right now, as the one who knew Ianto the least. He only hoped he was worrying too much.

"I really am sorry, mate. If you're Ianto or not I truly can't tell…Still it has been a long time since those two were themselves again. We owe you one, whoever you are."

Ianto nodded to Rhys and smiled at him again, this time with one that actually reached his eyes. "Thanks."

Rhys smiled goofily back, but before he could move Jack appeared behind him, patting him on his shoulder to have his attention.

"Rhys! I need you to go down in the basement. There's a machine similar to an electrocution chair there. I need you to go down and fetch it." Before Rhys could have a chance to get more information on it, Jack was already leaping towards Gwen, who was already sitting at her station to send Ianto's personal data to compare to the mainframe.

"Gwen! When you finish here, I need you to prepare the alien scanner in the medical bay. You know what to do." Gwen nodded and after a couple of more 'enter' commands she rushed in the direction of the scanner.

"Ianto!" Jack faced his lover, before actually remembering he wasn't supposed to give him orders. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he could win the uncertainties in his voice. "I-I mean… Ianto, if you are ok with it, we can begin taking some blood samples? Like the old days."

Ianto simply nodded and stood up, following Jack to the medical bay. As he took the blood sample Gwen finished setting the scanner, so by the time Rhys came back with the chair and a vast assortment of wires and cables, the computers had already confirmed Ianto's genetic and biological identity.

"Jack, are we really going to use the probe?" Gwen asked earnestly, realizing what Rhys was bringing up with him.

"I need to be sure he's him, Gwen. Go and wire it up."

Gwen tried to protest, but the captain stern stare didn't leave her much choice in the matter. She knew that when he decided to do something, he would keep being stubborn about it, just as much as she would. When she disappeared up the stairs of the medical bay, Jack glanced back towards Ianto and noticed him staring completely scared at what could be seen of the chair from there.

"Ianto? You remember what that is, don't you."

Ianto turned quickly to Jack, trying to offer a neutral expression despite the fear overwhelming him. His eyes were big and almost unfocused, as he was seeing the various explosions of the probe victims instead of Jack.

"O-of course."

"So you know we'll have to try that too, don't you?"

Ianto's eye focused properly on Jack's and he nodded. Nonetheless, the fact that he was still nervously destroying the material covering the small medical bed with his fingers didn't got lost on Jack.

Some more minutes of dread passed, until Gwen reappeared above the rail of the medical bay to signal them they were ready and the computers were connected. Ianto swallowed and, without moving his eyes from Jack, stood up like a man going to his own execution.

"I trust you." He stated nervously.

Even before his lover gave him the order, he walked up the stairs and approached the chair near the computers. He sat on it and nodded to Gwen and Rhys when they asked him if it was ok to tighten the leather strips around him. Jack reached them a few minutes later and positioned himself in front of Ianto, arms crossed and legs slightly widened. A worried frown was marring his handsome features.

"You ready?"

Ianto was trembling in fear, tightening his grip on the chair arms, but he nodded to his lover all the same.

Jack's hand rested on the starting button.

"One last thing you want to say?" He asked before gradually lowering his digit on the plastic surface.

It was slow, agonizingly slow and Ianto's fear grew by the second.

The only survivor to that thing was Beth, and she hadn't been human… All the other guinea pig had exploded. Their brain had ended up splattered everywhere, the blood had drenched each and every one of them, the stench of burned rotten meat had been lingering for weeks in the area after that. No one knew it better than him, because he had been the one who had to clean everything afterwards…

Who would have to clean _him_ up from the walls and floors in case this got out of hand? Would they get to him too late, leaving him to be devoured by his own pet pterodactyl?

Jack's words resounded in his ears… the _last thing you want to say_. Whether he was in for horrible pain or for death, his thoughts were one sided, surely damn Jack had understood that by now. But Jack also knew what meant it meant to explode. Oh gods, now he really was scared.

As his lover's finger was almost pushing down on the button, Ianto braced himself for the pain that was about to begin, closed his eyes shut ad cried aloud.

"I love you!"

The electric wave, though, never came.

Ianto opened one eye and then the other, scanning his surroundings. Gwen was slowly peaking through her fingers too, not understanding why nothing was happening. She had hidden her face in her hands and Rhys held her tight against his chest, closing his eyes as well, but the only thing left around them right now was just silence. No high pitched screams, no cries, no zapping and especially _no exploding_.

"Jack?"

Jack was still staring at Ianto, his lips a tight trembling line as he tried to contain his relief. His arms rested at his side now, his finger far away from the dreaded start button.

"Brave Ianto…" Jack muttered, his voice wavering a little even though the bright smile that was trying to break through the discomfort. "Loyal Ianto."

Jack's words attempted to trigger something lost in Ianto's memory, but everything was forgotten again as soon as the captain knelt down in front of him resting his hands over his lover's cuffed ones.

"My Ianto…"

Ianto's heart leaped in his chest as the real bright smile Jack usually reserved only for him reappeared on his face. A smile that he knew had long since left his handsome face, but that now was back, and already it was making Jack look ten years younger. His blue eyes had a new light in there that shone brightly.

Torchwood seemed to be one step closer to having his leader back.

Even if Ianto didn't understand why or how, it was 'mission accomplished'.

However, now that they were so close and Jack eyes were so full of love for him, it was becoming increasingly difficult for Ianto to remember that this wasn't his place.

This wasn't _his_ place, this wasn't _his_ time either, and even worse than that, this wasn't _his_ Jack. He shook his head, trying to focus only on being happy for past Torchwood. He had gone back for that reason after all, he wasn't supposed to let his feelings get in the way.

"In three months you will have your Ianto back." Ianto protested weakly after a long silence, trying to muster a calm voice.

"And he won't let you down." He hastened to add before Jack's smile could fade. "Ever."

Jack nodded. "I'll wait as a good boy, but I'll let you know that they will be the longest three months in my life. And taking into account I'm practically immortal and that I already waited two centuries for the Doctor, you must really consider yourself honoured, Ianto Jones."

"I do." Ianto answered him, blushing a bit and lowering his eyes, while Jack undid his bonds.

"You're horrible Jack!" Gwen cried, as soon as the realization of what had happened dawned on her too. "I can't believe you tricked us all like this!"

She sat down on the nearest chair and sighed tiredly, whilst Rhys still looked from Ianto to Jack to Gwen, not understanding any of the dynamics going on between the three of them.

"Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm the bad guy, I know." Jack confirmed plainly, showing no sign of guilt whatsoever, but visibly more relaxed.

"Still in the dark 'ere, mates. Care to explain?"

Gwen gave Rhys one of her most tired looks in _ages_.

"Bloody Jack never meant to use the bloody probe and 'ere we were worryin'… worryin'…" She gestured chaotically towards Ianto, hoping that Rhys could get the general idea without her having to say in words the doings of the damned apparatus.

Ianto couldn't stifle a small laugh and he raised an eyebrow at her. "…worrying that I might blow up like almost everything we seated on this thing?"

Gwen raised her arms to the ceiling and then she let them fall at her sides, regarding Ianto exasperatedly. "Thanks Ianto, I was trying to save everyone from the mental scarin' 'ere."

Both Jack and Ianto laughed, while Rhys made his best to keep himself firm of his feet and don't fall over for the shock. "You made me bring up some machinery that could blow up the kid!?"

"I'm hardly a kid anymore." Ianto muttered, mildly offended.

Jack placed a soft kiss on his front and helped him up, restraining himself from the urge to hold his Welshman closer.

"I could have never done that to you, Ianto. I know how much you hate the probe."

"What really scares me is that you managed to find another identical one, though."

Jack had to laugh at that remark. "You were adorable pretending to be electrocuted."

"I'm always adorable."

"Point."

"But why set up all this?" Rhys cut in the banter, feeling like he still was the only one kept in the dark. No matter how much time had passed since he entered first in contact with his wife's work and co-workers, he still thought they were all a bunch of bloody nuts who did even crazier things.

"He unquestionably showed us to have all the memories of our Ianto," Jack explained, taking pity on Rhys. "So I knew that the moment he saw the machine and I showed every intention of use it, if it had been a real threat he would have fled for self defence."

Rhys considered Jack explanation and eventually nodded, relief filling him as he looked back at Ianto and saw him still in one piece.

"Sorry I had to put you through this." Jack continued in a much guiltier tone, addressing Ianto. "Forgive me?"

"Always." Ianto answered with a bit of a smile, resisting with all his willpower the urge to kiss Jack, who was apparently fighting the same battle. Long seconds passed as they stared one at the other, unsure of where their limits were. Gwen coughed to have their attention back, and they both swallowed. In the end it was Jack who took a deep breath, and with a smile rubbed his hands together.

"Now!" He shouted, hoping that a change of topic was enough to break the tension rising between them before one of them gave in. "Team meeting!"

Without further time for inquiries, he leaped up to conference room, leaving a still dazed Ianto behind, following him with his gaze. Gwen patted him lightly on the shoulder and he snapped out of it too. After a small smile and a quick nod to each other they both walked up the stairs to join Jack, who was already waiting inside.

As soon as they entered the room, a cold shiver shook their frames though. They had already been taken aback by the almost clinical attention given to reconstruct everything the way it was before the explosion, but that alone didn't cover the horror they felt as they observed the particulars inside the conference room. Three espresso cups left dirty in the far corner of the table were just one of the scariest things there.

Surprisingly Jack didn't sit at the head of the table, but motioned Ianto to take that one in his place. Even if it wasn't unusual for the Torchwood leader change the sitting arrangements, usually this never brought Ianto to take the main seat. Furthermore, he _knew_ that what had been real in the past wasn't going to change in the future, except for the few times he had to take the Torchwood leadership by force to cover up for Jack, when he was away on his personal adventures.

Not that Jack did mind being taken by force too, as a payback for those occurrences at the time… Will mind. He had to remind himself that it was still in the future at this point.

Jack noticed the perplexed look on Ianto's face and smiled up at him. "_You_ know what the threat is this time, and I don't think you can explain too much without messing around the timelines, don't you? I'm offering you the leadership for the re-opening case of Torchwood Cardiff! At least until we understand who the enemy is and what you need us to do."

Ianto nodded nervously and took his place in front of Gwen's and Jack's proud stares. Their tea-boy actually had made a long way up the ranks and yes, the ranks were quite happy about it.

They observed quite interested as he took out a small earpod from one of the pocket of his suit and wore it, sliding a small lever on the top of it. After a small moment of silence a deep electronic noise came out of the device.

"Jack, you're there?" Ianto called.

His teammates stared astonished at him. What kind of technology possessed the future Torchwood to allow connection between past and future via comm?

"Everything went well. Could you send me the data we collected, please?"

It apparently worked also as upload and download device as well as data storage… that was absolutely technology out of the 21st century range, no matter how much ready their Torchwood was. Maybe in the end everything was truly a trap?

To Jack's horror a mumble similar to his own voice answered Ianto from the other side of the earpod. Even though he couldn't make out the words he was _certain_ that it was his own voice. After a couple of seconds the pod blipped and the blue neon garnishing turned red.

"Thank you. Later." Ianto said in the receiver, he switched back the lever and took the earpod off. He pressed the middle of it, pointing it towards the white screen behind him, and photos of cities in ruins began flickering on the screen.

Great, the thing also worked as slides projector.

The images of destruction though, successfully made everyone focusing back on the task at hand more than on the hi-tech earpod. Any thought about future Jack hopefully dismissed.

"It's not such a long story actually." Ianto began explaining in his professional matter-of-fact tone. "We can say that's just a common incident for Torchwood: we messed up with the wrong race trying to protect the Earth. Standard occurrence."

Jack and Gwen grinned knowingly at each other, but Rhys's worried stare darkened and instinctively reached for his wife's hand. Relief flooded him as she took his own hand firmly in hers.

"The main problem with this particular race," Ianto continued, stopping the slide-show to zoom on the image of a big turtle-like alien. "Is that they have advanced knowledge of time scanning and time travelling. They can only travel and search information back in time, but every time they actually move between timelines, they are immune to everything that was build before the time they just left."

"When we fought them, we have been lucky enough to trace back the year they came from and actually find weapons that worked against them. Everything courtesy of the rift of course, that has been dropping a decent number of things from the future lately, and also thanks to a bit of improvisation on our side."

"Wait, the rift is still active in the future?" Gwen asked, sounding more like she had just received an early Christmas gift than scared, knowing there would be even more life threatening situations for her in the future.

"Yeah, you know… Envision a volcano: sometimes it seems asleep forever, sometimes it spurts out everything it has, sometimes it is something in the middle." Ianto confirmed, rather satisfied with the metaphor he came up with.

"Anyway." He resumed. "Because of the little time we had left to prepare, even with working weapons we only managed to kill their leader, and we could achieve this only through Jack's can't-stay-dead trick. After that, they fell utterly disorganized and fled, we thought forever."

"However?" Jack asked him, intrigued by the story as much as enchanted by Ianto's voice and vowels.

"However while they were gone they reconstructed themselves in a some sort of oligarchy-democracy… something that would prevent them to feel defeated and fell apart if their only leader was killed again. What happened afterwards is all supposition, but we think that they scanned the past to get rid of you and your immortality."

"Let me guess, they couldn't find a thing." Jack grinned mischievously.

"Obviously. Strictly speaking you still aren't born and you still are not immortal."

"Then why come here?" Rhys asked, accepting the madness they were talking about more out of love for Gwen than for actually believing it.

"Because this is the weakest point in Torchwood history." Ianto sighed. "We're barely existing, our name, what we are and have done condemns us instead of giving us power and protection. And… Well, our hub is a mausoleum, I'm dead, Gwen's a wreck, our leader bleeds and you need _training_."

Silence fell among the four of them, all of them knowing that Ianto's words were true, no matter how much they hurt. When they went overseas, they thought that it was finally the new beginning they needed to lift up from the lowest point of their history. None of them had realized that in the end it wouldn't have made Gwen's life any fuller and that it would have only made Jack sink lower.

All of them sink lower, actually. As Ianto had capably put it, _this_ was their weakest point in history, even weakest than the period right after the whole Thames House ordeal. At least for a few months back then, Jack had still hoped he could find a way to get Ianto back or that he could recover from his pain. Now they all knew that those were both disrupted dreams.

"If you didn't come back, we wouldn't have stood a chance. That's why you are here, isn't it?" Jack muttered, still vaguely pretending to watch the slides.

"I simply try my best to help, but I don't believe myself to be such a key point in time and history." Ianto smiled sadly at his lover, his eyes telling him more than they meant to.

Jack couldn't bear it anymore and stared back at Ianto looking at him deeply in the eyes.

"For me you are, Ianto Jones. Gwen opened my eyes with her way to fight to protect her love life and then family despite working at Torchwood, but it was you that gave me the hope I could become someone I might like. You made me believe I could be good enough for someone, so that I could have what she had for myself."

Ianto looked at him, remembering the day after he came back to life and they all got together, pouring their souls to each other. He remembered those words and how much they had helped him in finding once again meaning in his newly restored and totally subverted life, but also how much they had hurt Gwen along with everything that was said after…

Past Jack's words were meant for his past self, not for him. He had to keep Jack focused on something else, no matter how much he knew the captain's soul needed cleansing.

"It's our fault this came upon you when you guys are in such terrible conditions." Ianto continued, despite the hurt in Jack's eyes. "We were supposed to find a way to stop their time travelling when we had the chance. We have been careless, this is our fault."

"Who is this '_we_', Ianto?" Jack asked trying to contain the more than slight bit of irrational jealousy he was feeling.

"You will know soon enough." Ianto stated, interrupting the slide show with a flick of his wrist. "But we can't do this if we don't trust each other first."

Jack bit his lip and nodded, while Gwen still stared at a vague point at the centre of the table, still processing the captain's words.

This was not supposed to happen now.

"Gwen?"

Gwen looked suddenly back at him, reacting more as an instinct than because she had actually snapped out of her thoughts or heard her friend's concerned voice. "Yeah?"

"Are you ok?" Ianto asked slowly.

She tightened her lips wide in a forced smile. "Yeah, yeah. Fine. I'm fine. Really."

Ianto kept staring at her, worry written all over his face. Gwen took a deep breath and reached for his hand, this time giving him a real warm smile. "We're fine, Ianto. Tell us, what do we have to do now?"

"The four of us can't do this alone, I'm sorry." He forced himself to answer with a warm, but confident voice. "We'll have to cheat timelines. Good old cheating."

Gwen smirked at him.

"Like Jack always does?"

Ianto smiled back at her. Now this was the Gwen he knew.

"Yeah, like he always does…" Ianto's eyes moved to his side to stare at Jack. "Hopefully, only when we're playing."

Jack felt observed and looked first at Ianto and then at Gwen, replaying the conversation the two just had in his head before actually settling for an offended expression as he crossed his arms on his chest.

"Of course only when we're playing! I'll have you know that once I'm with someone I don't cheat… Even though I would still be open to some threesome or more with my partner." He added plainly in the end.

Gwen raised her eyebrow at him, not completely sure if he was joking or not, but when she looked up to Ianto expecting some fit of jealousy, she saw him smiling at Jack quite pleased and relaxed.

"Less frequently than you would think you're up to, Jack." He teased him.

"Now" Ianto continued, smirking at them all. "Let me introduce Torchwood to Torchwood."


	3. Reinforcements

Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, no copyright infringement intended. If you still want to sue first bring Ianto back to Jack.

Warnings: Mention of almost everything Torchwood related except novels and comics. Not beta-read and English's not my native language, but beta-tested anyway by SOY. GRAPHIC FOOLING AROUND SCENE.

A/N: I'm not a lot fond of OCs when they're not needed, but let's just say Ianto's too smart to fuck up things by himself, so I had to give him a little help to go on with that. Hope you don't mind. Let me know, what you do think about it.

**Reinforcements**

"Are we going to see ourselves from the future then?" Rhys asked, extremely interested in the chance of getting more _personal_ snippets from his future.

Jack smirked at the innocent attempt of Gwen's husband to defy time and space continuum, and expected Ianto to dutifully begin a very detailed description of risks and dangers of messing around with your own timeline. Surprisingly he noticed his lover stiffening at the question.

"It's- Actually…"

And Ianto stumbling on words was hardly a good sign.

"It's not possible to cross your own timeline. Timey wimey stuff can't stretch that much." Ianto concluded hastily, feeling Jack's suspicious gaze on him.

The captain could plainly _feel_ the Doctor's presence behind such a made-up choice of words. How the hell did _his_ lover end up using those? It was well obvious that many years must have passed for this Ianto, but did his words mean that the Doctor will be back in their life soon? Was he directly connected with this turtle-like mess, maybe? And what if he was involved in Ianto's coming back to life instead?

Jack's head hurt.

An old friend had brought Ianto back to life. That was what his lover had said… But it could have been anyone, truth be told. He couldn't deny that he'd had a lot of friends in his long life, and that lots of them could have offered their own particular ideas on how to get Ianto back.

Obviously, that would be true if they didn't hate him as much as all his old friends usually did. He was sure that even the Doctor, deep inside himself… Well, maybe he didn't hate him, but certainly he didn't like him much or he just didn't understand him anymore.

Besides, the Time Lord would never offer to change the rules for Jack and bend the reality around him just to bring Ianto back, almost certainly creating a paradox. Partly it was his own fault, being a fixed point in time, partly it was simply that the Doctor couldn't honestly understand why he'd want back a 'common ape' from the otherwise ignored Cardiff. Trust him to understand Ianto was _his_ ape.

No, it certainly couldn't have been him the one that had made the miracle. If not him, then who had done it? Who else was left in this galaxy akin to him enough to _understand,_ and caring enough to help?

He just had to wait three more months and maybe everything would begin to make sense again, once and for all. At the moment the only thing he could do was to enjoy the view of his beautiful Welshman back in action next to him. And it was without doubt a very nice view.

"Oh, sure." Rhys nodded to Ianto, pretending that his words made sense, since they seemed to work for the others.

Jack finally stood up and professionally regarded his lover with a flirty smile. "Tell us what you need."

Ianto answered him with a knowing grin, before offering detailed instructions for the whole team. When all the others disappeared to follow his orders, he went back downstairs and switched on his old computer station, loading several computer programs from his multifunctional earpod and setting temporary access data for the expected group from the future.

No one questioned why the computers had no problem giving access to Ianto. Jack was almost in an acceptable mood, there was no reason to upset him again making him realize it hadn't been the most sensible choice he had done in ages leaving things _this much_ unchanged.

"That thing is marvellous." Gwen praised Ianto's earpod, as she passed by Ianto as she reached for a mass of cables behind the computers. "How many years in the future are you from to have such a beauty? Surely not that many, considering."

Again Ianto stiffened, before pretending deadpan nonchalance. "Timey wimey."

"You're no fun at all." She grumbled, and then she headed back to the water tower.

With a final enter, Ianto finished setting the computers and stood up to check on the others, only to find himself face to face with Jack. They both stared startled at one another, until the captain found enough cold blood to at least pretend to be the efficient and professional man Ianto had known four years before.

"Cables wired up, platform settled and… I guess you managed the computers?" Jack waited for Ianto to nod, and then continued in a more subdued tone. "Still something's off. You sure you don't want to talk to me about it?"

"We-We'll…" Ianto stuttered, fighting for self control. "We'll have to discuss all this in three months, I'm sorry. I can't listen to you, I can't give you hope, I can't reassure you about the future nor the past… I can't do or explain a single _thing_ that's not relevant to the mission."

"Ianto…" Jack searched in the depths of Ianto's eyes for something, but eventually he gave up. He knew that if Ianto was so unsure about revealing secrets, there had to be a pretty good reason behind it. "I trust you. The secretiveness simply doesn't suit you."

"Timey-"

"-wimey. Yeah, I know." Instead of leaning in for a kiss, Jack made himself pat Ianto's shoulder friendly. The conversation via earpod that he had heard before had made somehow more real the idea that this Ianto already had another Jack waiting for him at home, and he personally didn't know how he would feel knowing that his lover had cheated on him with a younger version of himself.

If they still were together anyway.

After the way he treated him in the past, what reason had Ianto to carry on their unnamed relationship? He knew they loved each other, but was it enough to keep it going?

Jack was flirty and unbounded, with lots of past lovers and a lot of future ahead; on the other hand Ianto lived for committed relationships. Jack would last forever, but Ianto's life had already slipped away once. Jack couldn't manage to get one thing the way the men he loved wanted, even when he tried his best; on the contrary Ianto would accept everything to stay with his captain and usually knew what he needed before his lover had even a chance to ask.

Worst of all, Jack was a monster who had killed his own grandson, sent to something worse than death twelve children, and had been making sacrifices along the way all his life as an excuse to save the day. Ianto was the hero who gave up his life to try and protect everyone without any civil casualties.

Who was he to keep corrupting the man he claimed to love with his own imperfections? He had already killed him once. Yet, he knew he had no strength inside himself to let Ianto go, nor to accept the parting of their ways in case his lover asked for that.

Jack's eyes fell on Ianto's earpod… Three more months before talking about what had been killing him inside for four years. There was no other chance other than to keep going with the flow for now, even though now more than ever, he was certain he wasn't going to stand firm that long.

"Call him back, and tell him we're ready."

Ianto gave him an awkward nod and wore the earpod.

"I really _am_ sorry, Jack. You know how much I hate keeping things from you."

Jack closed up the space between them, but before he could reply Ianto switched nervously the small lever on the top of his device, activating the communications with the future.

"Jack?" Ianto's voice sounded rasp and Jack couldn't refrain his smile, knowing pretty well the reason behind his discomfort. His grin grew even wider when his lover blushed furiously and his eyes lit up in shock, probably because of something his future counterpart had said on the other side. Well if Ianto's natural reaction to him was so obvious for him, it must have been obvious also for the Jack on the other side of the earpod.

"Stop joking around and send them! We are ready!"

Ianto switched hastily the earpod lever again, but didn't remove the piece. Instead he walked quickly towards the makeshift platform, pretending to ignore his lover altogether.

"You know you can't blame me for what he has said, right?" Jack whispered smugly in Ianto's ear as soon as he caught up with him.

Ianto glared at him, embarrassment still shining in his eyes, but nevertheless challenging Jack to make him behave otherwise. Before they could open they mouths though, the platform lightened up and four shadows appeared, all of them clutched around the one in the middle.

With a loud _zap_ they finally were in focus, much to Gwen and Rhys's surprise, since they didn't know what to expect and when yet.

"Are you all in one piece?" Ianto asked smirking, and then offered them his hand to step off the platform.

"Nauseated, but fine." A tall, black man in his late twenties answered him, as he grasped Ianto's hand for dear life. His white gown flowed around him more like a leather long coat than a medical garb. As soon as he reached the ground he fled ungraciously to the nearest wall, letting himself slide down the surface to sit on the floor.

"A doctor with motion sickness…" Ianto shook his head, eyeing the boy rudely as he helped down a young sandy blond girl that didn't look much older than twenty. Her wavy hair were tied up in a ponytail and a smug grin was plastered on her face, making her pale blue eyes look as if they could kill with daggers.

"I'm done with this damn time travel!" The medic argued in the meantime, challenging Ianto with his eyes. His deep cockney accent marked heavily each word.

"Yeah yeah."

After the girl, Ianto helped a younger and skinnier shaking version of Gwen down the platform, whilst the remaining member of the future Torchwood squad, a dark haired boy in his mid-twenties with plump cheeks, storm blue eyes and a union jack T-shirt jumped down cheekily by himself to go and batter up the distraught medic some more. On his wrist shone nothing less than Jack's wrist-strap.

"Am I going around lending my wrist-strap to everyone in your future?" Jack commented gallantly, in a desperate attempt to get Ianto's attention back to himself.

"I find myself lending my stopwatch sometimes. Sure you can do the same with you wrist-strap in case of an emergency." Ianto argued back in the same tone, before leaving some space between himself and the newcomers.

"Presentation time!" He proclaimed proudly, taking the shaking hand of the shy Gwen look-alike. "This young lady is Gwyneth Williams, she's good with computers. Not a genius, but she's especially fast and efficient. She's the youngest and newest addition to our team, that's why once she finished hacking the mainframes and solving coding-related problems she will be on the clear. Hope you won't mind if she doesn't stay until the end of this."

The girl stared at the past Torchwood team with two big brown eyes full of fear, until she finally swallowed down her panic enough to muster a small smile and to whisper a barely audible '_hello'_.

"As for the other three," Ianto continued less ceremoniously, pointing behind himself to the other girl and the two boys. "We call them the Happy Jones Triad."

"There's Mark, Alice and Steven." He explained, pointing first towards the medic and then to the girl and the boy with Jack's wrist-strap.

"It seems we're not allowed to have a proper competent doctor within our ranks not even in the future" Ianto went on, drily smirking at the dark skinned doctor. "But we make do with what we have."

Mark snorted at Ianto's comment, whilst Alice giggled, hiding her mouth behind one hand to cover up her amusement in front of her teammate. The medic noticed her anyway, and glared in her general direction, still too much undone to focus properly on something or someone.

"C'mon, at least this time we're the Happy Jones Triad" Alice tried to defend herself, faking an innocent smiling face. "Last week we were the Oblivious Jones Triad."

"And the week before… What was it?" Steven added, feigning a thoughtful expression. "Oh, that's it: the _Disastrous_ Jones Triad."

Ianto rolled his eyes, but he kept ignoring them not to give the kids satisfaction.

"The other two!" Ianto cut in, purposefully leaving them some seconds of silence to get a hold of themselves.

"–are just amateurs." He finished with a deadpan, hoping to shut down the banter for at least a couple of hours.

Even though he had been forced to bring in almost their whole team, because of the limited time they had left and the terrible state of present Torchwood, Ianto knew that the less the four kids talked the better it was for everyone. Especially when Gwen and Jack were listening.

His team was young and with little experience in keeping things secret, especially considering that they couldn't honestly know what could give them away.

On the other hand, Jack had already sensed that something was off and Gwen was a practiced police officer who knew how to dig in things enough to uncover them.

It was like giving four lambs to two hungry wolves. Wolves hungry for information and also particularly strong willed and dedicated to a cause once they had embraced one.

Especially Gwen. Once she had put her mind to it, there was no way to stop her, and no one knew that better than him. Her perseverance had been essentially the only reason to lead her straight to Flat Holm despite Jack's orders. She would have found it anyway after all.

His little clue had just helped her in the right direction quicker and without making her waste too much time over things they were already dealing with. And, well, the fact that Jack's punishment had been one of his most arousing memories just was a pleasant bonus.

"Amateurs? In Torchwood?" Gwen asked him doubtfully, raising an eyebrow and proving Ianto's point quicker than he thought possible.

"They are good amateurs." Ianto admitted vaguely, conceding the point. "They're both useful and he's exceptionally good with some of the weapons we already have."

"So" Jack clapped his hands smiling enthusiastically, looking at the new group. "What's the plan?"

Oblivious to the suspicious glares between Ianto and Gwen, Jack simply enjoyed taking in the new addictions to the team. He loved to have new people around and strangely all those new kids in front of him felt familiar in a way or another. He was positively sure he was going to have a lot of fun tracking down the ancestry in case they were related to people he had known.

However, he also realized they were there for a reason, so the quicker they dealt with it sooner he could focus on his little game.

"We can't stop them from coming," Ianto explained, relieved to step out from Gwen's measuring stares. "So, first of all we'll have to find a place where they won't harm anyone. After that, if we can manage to build something like a teleportation magnet, it will make them appear right where we want them."

"Easier said than done," Jack argued, considering the problems of such suggestion. "Stuff like that can't be built in this century, much less designed."

"We already have the plans for building such a machine actually," Ianto countered plainly, leaving Jack with his mouth hanging open as it often did around him. "And about the materials to use, well, we could always replace the specific Martian polymeric iron with another light alloy. It has to work only once after all, and only for this specific species."

"Ianto Jones, since when you became an expert on alloys and hi-tech devices?" Jack teased.

"I know everything, sir." Ianto answered, winking at him. "And you know I quickly learn everything you see fit to teach me."

"Guys?" Rhys called from what seemed kilometres away. "We still have no orders. You 'now? Destruction of the Earth and stuff?"

Ianto and Jack were disappointed that their little innuendo show had to be cut off so abruptly when it was barely beginning, but work was work, hence they cleared their throat and dutifully pretended to focus back on the task at hand.

"Yes a- place…" Jack began saying, but unfortunately his brain couldn't supply any useful suggestion of non sexual nature. It wasn't really his fault that Ianto was even more attractive about ten years older, and that he was sex-starved. Well, actually make it more like _make love_ starved .

"What about that small village in the countryside?" Gwen proposed, offering help to the struggling men. "It was left deserted since the day we arrested every single villager."

"Great idea, Gwen." Jack praised her with his most pleased smile. "What do you think?"

"Will make do. We still need the material to build the magnet, though."

"Don't worry about the alloy, a friend of mine owes me a favour."

Ianto's glare pierced through Jack like a stab.

Jealousy had been a rather recent addition to their relationship back when the 456 had happened, but in this four years he had found out how much he had actually grow accustomed to it. What at the beginning he had considered a possible nuisance, ended up being one among the lots of little things that Ianto did that kept making Jack feel cared for and fall for his lover harder every day more.

That aside, well… Jealous Ianto was a good sign for him as much as it was a dangerous one. A really good sign indeed, if he remembered well enough how the man used to remind him who he belonged to.

"Long story, but strictly professional." Jack cut short, before he could actually endanger himself with more details.

"Then ask this _friend of yours_ to bring everything to the village, so we can build the magnet right there, ok?" Ianto asked with a freezing voice that made Jack shiver. Then he turned his attention to Gwen, showing her a much warmer smile. "Gwen, could you make sure the police puts off-limits the entire area? I don't think we have enough connections active at the moment to do that ourselves."

Both Gwen and Jack nodded obediently for two different reason: one out of fear, the other happy to get a friendly suggestion instead of crude orders once in a while.

"If you have plans, I can help?" Rhys offered, still uncertain about his role in this new project. "I'm not bad in do-it-yourself."

"Ianto, how long could it take to build the magnet?" Jack asked his lover, frowning deep in concentration as he considered different combinations of schedules and team-members.

"Rhys and Steven together could finish the work in less than three hours if they don't mess up. We bought special equipment to ease the task, but the quicker we finish the better."

"If Rhys can get the lorry they could bring the material themselves at the village. If we do the delivery ourselves, it will save us precious time, especially now that our name lost resonance."

Jack waited for Ianto to consider the idea, and as soon as his lover approved it as valid he turned to Gwen and Rhys to give them the details. Ianto on the other hand put his hands on his hips and turned to glare at his own squad.

"Time to work!" He barked, and the future Torchwood team diligently lined up in a straight line.

"Alice, take my computer. Put up everything we have: firewalls, detectors. Connect every unauthorized attempt to enter Torchwood software to a time bomb under the prime minister bed if you have to. Last thing we need is them interfering again. When you're finished with the security protocols, cross-reference everything archived in this base and in the whole word with the time limit data we have and see if we can get other weapons that will work against them."

"Gwyneth, take the computer next to mine. We need a program that can tell us _exactly_ when they're coming and whether the magnet is working or not. Set it to send the alarms directly to the Torchwood earpods and comms. Make it work for all of us, past and future. Enter the data we already have and try to track them down in time. We have to be certain they didn't stop somewhere in the middle to get new allies and weapons in the meantime."

"Mark, medical bay! You have the data on the venom they use, make enough antidotes for everyone and then finish cracking that formula for whatsoever poison is lethal for them. Steven, tag along with Rhys and try not to lose the plans and the shapes for the magnet this time. Everything clear?"

"Yes, sir!" The team said together and in few seconds they all scrambled to their respective position under the shocked eyes of both Jack and Gwen.

"What have you done to our quiet tea-boy?" Gwen asked puzzled, frozen in surprise while she was dialling the police number.

Ianto simply smiled self-assuredly at her.

"Jack isn't always where we need him when we need him, you should know that. We learnt that is good to take turns in covering up for him. After a while it becomes annoying."

Gwen laughed, understanding too well how much Ianto was right and walked away to make her call, patting a still shocked Jack on his shoulders as she passed behind him.

"You don't like ordering around your old team, but with the new one…. Wow."

"Too scary for you?" Ianto teased, almost sincerely worried. _Almost_ being the key-word.

"Too sexy. Please tell me I can take you away from work for at least twenty minutes. I'll cope with my future self one way or another."

Ianto blushed at Jack's proposition and really had to gather all his willpower to not yield to his lover's sensual smile.

"I can find a couple of minutes to make you and the guys a good coffee… Would you like that?"

Ianto's eyes shone with mischief.

"You know your coffee is the best orgasmic experience next to you, don't you?" Jack complained, taking Ianto in his arms. "These damn three months will be the death of me, but right now I'm happy just knowing you are again here next to me."

"Being dead never stopped you." Ianto considered with mirth.

"You know what I meant."

He regarded his lover's face, reaching out to stroke his cheek lovingly.

"I'll always be next to you, Jack. Just wait for me."

Jack sighed and before his feelings messed up with his heart again, he took Ianto's hand in his and placed a small peck on its palm.

"I'll be in my office making up ways to keep UNIT occupied for the next couple of days." He stated.

Ianto nodded, a big smile plastered on his face, and made his way towards his beloved coffee machine.

As soon as the couple cleared the area near the water tower, a clear smug voice whispered in the semi-silence of the hub.

"Hoy, Gwyn. Ten quid on those two back dabbling in less than 12 hours. Are you on?"

Gwyneth stared horrified at Alice, and then hastily buried her nose back in the program she was writing.

"That's simply disgusting coming from you."

"I'm not alone in this." Alice retorted, feigning complete innocence. "My brother already bet they might try something before tomorrow, and Mark believes that whatever might happen, they will wake up in bed in each other's arms."

"Can't believe you guys let Mark in… in this insanity! It's their private life, we should respect it."

Gwyneth snorted and shook her head, hoping one day to find a way to compile a program that would make her forget what she had just heard with a simple double click.

"Morally grounded are you, Gwyn?" Alice teased, leaning dangerously in her teammate personal space.

"It's just-" Gwyneth tried to say, as she checked that Ianto was still beyond earshot and busy bringing the coffee to the others. Then she took a long breath and explained herself. "I simply can't grasp neither the 21st century side of their relationship or the 51st. Sometimes they are too forwards, other times extremely old-fashioned. Let's just say I feel safer in the middle."

Alice laughed at her remark and focused back on the sabotage of the government computer system.

"That's so 21st century of you."

"Stop talking like you lived in it." Gwyneth bit back, trying to hide the grin that was tugging at her lips and throwing playfully a small paper ball at her snickering teammate. "And still no up for the bloody bet."

"Stop the bickering girls or I'll make you tea next time." Ianto interrupted them, placing a mug full of steaming coffee on both stations and a plate of chocolate biscuits in the middle.

"How's it going?"

"Tracking program almost done, but…"Gwyneth trailed off noticing a new notification. "Our Jack sent over a new batch of data he just finished analyzing… I'll have to integrate those in the clusters I had already set before actually being sure it works. That could take some time."

"Do what you have to do. Good work as always, Gwyn. Alice?"

"Set a virus that will shut down the government's whole network if they try to mingle with Torchwood again. If they try to reverse it, all their computers will drop dead with the message '_We accepted you invitation to play doctor with you. Love Torchwood_' on the screen."

Ianto laughed at her idea and ruffled her hair affectionately. "You're the worst! Try being a good girl for once, will you?"

"Yes, sir." Alice exclaimed, pretending to be professional.

Ianto simply shook his head and left the girls to their own devices to bring Jack his coffee. He found the captain busy typing something on his computer, so he simply laid the mug and the plate of biscuits next to him and sat on the edge of the table sipping his own.

Before long, Jack finished typing and with a final enter dismissed angrily the current UNIT general.

"You would guess that if the Queen herself announced that Torchwood was back, UNIT would at least believe her instead of shutting us off like civilians." Jack explained before losing himself in the coffee strong aroma. "God, I missed your coffee Ianto."

Ianto grinned at him and closed the distance between them. "The almighty Torchwood must use common website e-mails? Shame on you Capitan Jack Harkness."

"I beg forgiveness. These last four years have been a bit of a hell for me, believe me." Jack couldn't stop a moan escaping his lips as the dark liquid flow down his throat. "This is heaven, though."

Ianto smirked mischievously at his lover and pretended to go away. "I won't bother you then. I'll go back to work, sir."

"Don't!" Jack left the empty mug on his desk to follow Ianto and hold him in his arms. "Don't go, Ianto."

"There's still much to do, Jack." Ianto reasoned weakly, his heart already beating way too fast in his chest. "We have to prepare the gear for all of us, collect the weapons, set up a camp in the area to be ready there when they'll come…"

"Work has always been my priority, things have to change."

"Not now." Ianto countered seriously, turning in his arms to face him. "Not for _this_ me. Not like this. We need you whole to do this, Jack. Like you used to be. You and I, you know… _We_ can wait."

"I can't be whole without us." Jack countered, giving up all pretences to feel sincerely fine.

"I-I can't help in this. Technically speaking I'm still dead."

"Bugger!" He cried, tightening his grip on his lover, who was now staring at him, his eyes wide and troubled. "You are here in front of me right now! Retcon me if you have to, but this is driving me crazy… I'm not asking for sex, just to have you actually back. Let me recharge my batteries, so I can survive this next three months and go through this save-the-world mission. Or is there some other reason why you can't-"

Without leaving Jack enough time to finish his words, Ianto reached for his wrist and tugged it towards him, so that they fell both backwards on the sofa. He took advantage of Jack's initial disorientation to lead his lover lying securely under him, his arms resting at Jack's sides and trapping him firmly. Every inch of them touched and burned from the desire brought by the closeness.

However, Jack needed way more than this, and in a quite obvious reference to their experience with the pterodactyl, he widened his legs to better accommodate Ianto on him and brought their groins together in a delicious yet maddening friction.

"Thought you weren't after sex." Ianto protested weakly, already drunk on his lover's pheromones and with his half lidded eyes glued on Jack's lips.

Jack stared back at him, his eyes full of sorrowful need. He searched up for Ianto's lips with his owns, hoping to finally break his lover's detachment thanks to the frustrating proximity of their mouths.

The captain was broken, hollow and lost…and still incredibly handsome. Ianto couldn't find enough strength within himself to deny his heart and body to his lover when he needed him this much.

He already knew that eventually this was going to happen, his Jack had said that much and his lover had already cleared him out for what he was about to do. He would have never imagined though, that all of this wouldn't feel like cheating at all, despite what he feared arguing with the captain back in the future.

To give in was like a second nature.

Soft lips finally reached down to close the gap with Jack's ones, causing their bodies to shake with absolute pleasure, that ran through them like a powerful wave of electricity that constricted their hearts like a crown of thorns and made them bleed.

Tears threatened to fall from his eyes, but Jack simply deepened the kiss, trying to bring Ianto even closer, so that he would never have to give him up again. As he felt Jack's tongue invading his mouth, Ianto knew there was no turning back, because his lover needed this, no matter what _this_ was.

Ianto's hand explored urgently Jack's chest, with languid strokes that began from above his waistband and crossed his abs to brush firmly his erect nipples. His lips devoured his lover's mouth, then they moved along to kiss his jaw and after that trailed down to the neck finishing their journey over Jack's sensitive nipple as they replaced his hand.

The desperate captain was shortly a writhing mess, asking for release and absolution. Ianto took him firmly in his arms and while kissing his way back to Jack's lips, he let a hand wonder to undo his lover's belt. Jack tried to reach down to do the same for Ianto, but his hand was quickly slapped away, while Ianto's tongue provoked the supreme distraction as he wetted and nibbled at his neck right under the chin.

Once he had finally quietened his lover, Ianto slid down Jack's trousers and pants, reaching down between his legs to cup firmly Jack's butt. The captain moaned and searched for more friction instead of the maddening slow massage Ianto was harassing him with.

When he thought it was enough, Ianto gave up the teasing and reached inside one of his pockets only to produce a small bottle of lube. He quickly took a generous amount on the palm of his hand before shutting it close again and leaving it next to the sofa.

"Ianto Jones, do I need to know what you're doing with a bottle of lube in your pockets?"

Ianto grinned seductively, arching an eyebrow at his lover as he entered Jack's ass with his finger. "That would be you, sir."

Jack groaned, as he tried to cling as close as possible to his lover, despite the position they were in. Ianto accommodated him the better he could while fucking him with his slick fingers. By the time he added a third, Jack was already reaching the edge without Ianto even touching his cock.

"God, Ianto… Fuck me already!"

Ianto freed his arms from around Jack's shoulders and hovered over him, only to capture his lips back in a hungry kiss. The captain moaned in his lover's mouth and Ianto took his chance to finally grip Jack's cock and stoke it furiously.

With the new angle, his fingers inside Jack's ass went even deeper and hit each time the perfect point to make his lover's pleasure even more intense. The double stimulation was too much, and the small touches of Ianto here and there in the whole scenario didn't help Jack maintaining his composure.

No matter if it was a light kiss on his cheek or an unexpected nibble at his ear, every single detail of their improper love making was screamed Ianto. And this excited him as much as it crushed him from the inside.

"Come, Jack. I'm here…" Ianto told him, his own voice rasp from arousal. "I won't leave you alone again for a long time. Trust me, love."

And then Jack came, hard like he had never come so hard in a long time… and seeing Ianto's warm smile upon him, he finally let out the tears he never really managed to set free. Ignoring his own painful erection and the mess on his lover's stomach, Ianto nestled Jack close to his chest hoping to soothe his sobs with soft caresses.

"I missed you…You have no idea how much…"

Ianto pressed his lips to Jack's forehead and tightened their embrace. He had done too much, he had said too much. However, things already done couldn't be changed and his lover had needed to let go. The only thing he could do now was play along with his mistakes and hope to not reveal much else. He had no intention of hurting or confusing Jack more than necessary.

"I'm back, Jack. And you won't get rid of me that easily."

Jack looked up at Ianto sniffling, but had to look away right after, ashamed.

"You sure you can deal with me like this?" Jack asked weakly. He accepted the handkerchief Ianto was offering him and after blowing his nose, he snuggled himself cosily in his lover's arms.

"I'll let you know that I've dealt with you in even worse situations and positions." Ianto reached for his lips and kissed him lightly. No pressure, no desperation, no lust. Only pure and simple love and devotion.

"You don't need to hide from me, Jack. I won't stop loving you if sometimes you need comfort. I thought we were already past that." Ianto grinned teasingly. "Besides, keeping everything to yourself makes you age faster, you know? With such a long life span I would consider the side effects."

Jack grinned back as he rested his head on Ianto's shoulder. "You're right, I look in my mid-fifty."

"You'll get better with time, believe me. A wonderful aging back."

"Will I get a lifting?"

Ianto snorted, even though he was relieved that now Jack felt well enough to joke around.

"Do you really believe that's going to work on you? Besides," He poked Jack's nose with the tip of his index finger. "I won't let you cut yourself up for saving the world, much less for some bloody vanity."

Jack gave him a small peck on the lips. "Thank you, but how are _you_, Ianto?"

"All the better for having you back, sir. At any rate we have to get back to work."

"Can't I thank you in some more physical ways?" Jack asked, leaving a soft trail of kisses along Ianto's jaw.

"Mmm… No way I'm going to spoil it for myself when I'll come back." Jack stopped his kissing and groaned. He had almost managed to forget about the bloody three months nightmare.

Three months be damned, what were supposed to do now?

"Sorry, Ianto. I made you do something you didn't want-"

"Don't trouble yourself too much. It was my choice and you really needed it." Ianto interrupted him evenly, hoping that saying that out loud had the magical property of making him feel less guilty. "Are you feeling better now?"

Jack inhaled deeply his lover's scent. "Yeah… Never been better in my whole life."

"Battery recharged?"

"Yeah recharged…" Jack looked up at Ianto and captured back his lips with his own. "Still wouldn't mind…If you wanted to recharge them some… more…"

Just as Ianto fell in Jack's trap and was kissing him back heatedly, the telephone rang. They both stopped and groaned at the devilish device. Ianto helped Jack clean himself up and button up his trousers as the man answered the phone and pretended a cheerful and flattering tone to please UNIT.

As soon as his work with Jack was finished, Ianto rearranged his suit properly and left the man to his own devices to collect the mugs back and check on his team.

The show had to go on.


	4. War and Secrets

Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, no copyright infringement intended. If you still want to sue first bring Ianto back to Jack.

Warnings: Spoilers for almost everything except novels and comics. Not beta-read and English's not my native language. Beta-tested by SOY

**War and Secrets**

As Ianto made his way back to the others, he instantly felt a pair of dark eyes burning holes into his head. He looked at his side and predictably saw Mark glaring at him, the very picture of an annoyed man.

"You know, that damn office has walls made of glass."

"Considering that we never redid the interiors," Ianto replied drily, "I must give you some credit for having finally noticed it after five years, Mark. You're sharper than you look."

"I couldn't have put into words the problem better." Mark replied, ignoring the insult and crossing his arms over his chest. "Five years of glass walls and you two in that office."

Before Ianto could find a proper retort against the already retreating medic, Gwyneth grabbed the corner of his jacket, shaking her head empathically.

"Don't let them bother you. He's just upset because you two used the sofa. And she's upset," She added, nodding in the direction of a sulking Alice "Because Jack said that what you did was not proper sex."

Ianto sighed and hid his eyes behind his hand. Great. Jack already knew about the recent events, his team had probably seen and overheard everything and they had also bets on the outcome. Again. Why couldn't things be different for a change?

There was a time in which he thought he had reached his limit just because of Gwen's off-hand comments, but right now he would have given anything to go back to that state of innocent comradeship.

"Do I even want to know what the bets are about this time?"

Gwyneth patted his arm affectionately and then she simply went back to her station, grimacing and shaking her head firmly.

Her actions were no consolation of any sort to his nerves, but Ianto decided to take it as it was. They still had plenty of work to do, and it was time he did something manual too, even though technically speaking his job _was_ only lurking around.

"How's work going?" Ianto asked Gwyneth as he hovered behind her.

"Compiling almost finished. Testing phase next."

"Alice?"

No answer came, and he looked at her, only to find the girl glaring back at him, her full lips pursed in sign of utter displeasure.

"Here we are working… and _you_ can't even fool around properly."

Ianto blushed, because well, he _had been _fooling around, but also because his squad criticizing his sexual exploits was news to him too. No matter what Jack got him used to, he simply couldn't bear his sex life being on the scene in front of absolutely _everyone_.

He had to admit that usually he begged for it with his own actions, though.

"More chocolate biscuits can set us square?" Ianto asked with a raised eyebrow, knowing too well that food wasn't just the quickest way to a lover's heart, but also to an amateur's one.

All his family and work-related relationships were basically built up on coffee, biscuits and dinners: Rhiannon's food-related excuses had taught him well.

"Might help." She said, her eyes glinting greedily at the offer, even though she was trying to keep her face blank.

Ianto shook his head and went back to the kitchen to set aside the dirty mugs and refill the plates of biscuits for the team. By the time he got back to the girls, Alice had already a list printed out for him.

"Cross-referencing finished. Almost everything useful is written here, but… I didn't know UNIT used to store Torchwood stuff. We might need to ask to get some of the items back, though."

"They never did," Ianto muttered, taking the sheet.

He scanned the list quickly, worry written all over his face as he read it over. The weapons listed there were not simply Torchwood stuff, but more specifically former possessions of Torchwood _One_. Could it be that UNIT had nicked them from the ruins of Canary Wharf? Moreover, the list included only what came after his future, what else had they hidden in their storages?

"Alice, could you please check where the UNIT facilities with Torchwood materials are located? I'll be back soon."

Before she could answer, Ianto was already disappearing upstairs, inside Jack's office.

The infuriated captain was still busy fighting with someone over his phone, but from the looks of it he was about to hang up on his victim in anger.

"Damn all British UNIT bases, that's why Martha fled to New York!" Jack shouted exasperated as he slammed the receiver back in his place as predicted.

"Maybe here's the reason why they don't want to deal with us anymore. Have a look."

Jack took the paper from Ianto and quickly scanned the list of items. "Why is some of UNIT stored equipment sounding familiar?"

"Because that's _not_ UNIT equipment, that's Torchwood One stuff. I personally catalogued some of those weapons either as destroyed or absorbed via the void when I archived the ones Three brought back to Cardiff."

"_You_ archived them? I didn't hire you straight away after Canary Wharf." Jack argued. "I do remember a lot of stalking, weevil hunting, sensual coffee and a pterodactyl first date in between. I still remember your hard on pres-"

"Even so," Ianto interrupted hastily his overly chatty lover. "_I_ archived what _you_ had scavenged from the ruins and left forgotten like _trash_ in the basement. After that I also wrote down a list of the things I knew that were missing. Anyway, looks like back then you took only part of the working devices… Or, if you did your job properly, simply someone got there before you did."

Jack looked at him thoughtful. "I _do_ remember we had to wait for the green light before going there… We thought they just wanted to pull ranks on little old Cardiff, but now…"

"Someone else got there first." Ianto guessed tiredly. "You know? Now that I think about it… I remember you shouting at UNIT more than usual the first weeks after I came back from death. Maybe _this_ could have been the reason."

Jack looked at him surprised. "Didn't I let you know what it was about? How come? I always tell you first when new work related problems arise."

Ianto smirked and looked away from his lover, a shy blush spreading over his cheeks. "Sometimes you _only_ tell me… Like the background story of the night travellers."

"You were the only one I wanted to tell about that." Jack told him evenly, making Ianto look back at him as his heart pumped faster in his chest. "It wasn't strictly work related."

The moment, lingering between them after the captain's confession, was cut short by Ianto, who simply coughed and straightened up professionally. Reminiscing the past had been another very bad idea.

"Anyway… We are talking about Torchwood One here." He explained, trying to go back to the original topic of the conversation. "Hardly one of the best subjects to come up with after four years being dead, especially considering that I almost died that day too and I lost my girlfriend because of it."

"Fair point." Jack conceded, amused by Ianto's clumsy detachment, but also extremely worried about the stolen goods. "Still, we have no idea about what to do to get those things back, especially taking into consideration that we _really_ need the weapons."

"We can say we ran a scan to be sure someone didn't steal stuff from the ruins of the hub and we found out that they have something of ours. No need to tell them we know it actually came from the London branch right now. We thank them, since they kept it safe from civilians of course, and then swore to give them compensation for being so keen in protecting our secrecy."

Ianto's pure evil smirk quirked his lips as he set to tell Jack the best part of his plan. "Finally, you remember them that you had a four years delay in claiming back your things because you lost your archivist at Thames House."

"Wonderful plan, but I don't like giving you the blame." Jack argued, annoyed by the carefree reference to Thames House. "I don't care if it's just a way to pressure them."

"Jack, they _knew_ you were shagging your archivist. They were quite keen in making their dislike apparent whenever we showed up together, because they said it was a bad work environment. Nevertheless my name is what will make them shut up once and for all… They _do_ realize you're still hurting."

"Still don't like it." Jack looked up at Ianto, and his resolve crumbled in front of his lover's expectant eyes. "But you're right, they will fear for their safety if I say your name by chance, they still feel guilty about it."

He took again the receiver of the telephone and began dialling again the number to contact UNIT.

"As soon as Gwen's back send her to get the equipment, we'd better not losing precious time. You might go with her as well, since you know which items we need." Ianto nodded, and retreated towards the main hub, slow enough to catch Jack adding loudly, "And for the record, I was _not_ shagging our archivist. I was making love to him."

Ianto offered him a sweet smile and Jack grinned back, just in time before he had to focus on the voice who had just answered the phone.

The moment Ianto reached the workstations area downstairs, his three team-members rushed forwards, lining up in front of him dutifully.

"Report?" He asked them, suspecting they had news for him.

"Alien traces, nothing new there." Gwyneth explained competently. "Sent their current data to Steven. He said they had no problem retrieving the alloy and they just got to the village. He shaped the pieces inside the lorry, so all they have to do now is assemble the parts. Oh, and he mentioned they might need to embed some kind of software to control the magnetism."

"Can you do that?"

"Already working on it."

"Good. Mark?"

"Antidote ready." The medic proudly showed the case of a first aid kit, smiling widely. "Put everything in here and protected it so that the vials won't crash by chance."

"Any lead on the venom?"

"Might have something that works actually, but it needs to be iced to work. It's not toxic for us, so if we could find a way to spray it on them from some distance, it might be used without ourselves with it."

"Vaporise a liquid at 0°C?" Ianto pondered, mentally searching for something useful in his memory. "I remember we had something that did just that hidden in the locked archives. If Jack has managed to gather those back at this point we could use them."

"I finished my work here. I could go and hunt them down?" Alice interrupted, offering another piece of paper with the list of UNIT warehouses printed on it. Ianto took it and nodded thoughtfully at her.

"Yes please. You might have a long search ahead of you, do you realise that?"

"Yeah, yeah: the archive labyrinth. Usual passwords?"

"Never bothered to change them."

Ianto smiled at her and followed Alice with his eyes, until she disappeared in the archive maze, and then he turned again to Mark.

"Do you have everything you need to synthesize that venom?"

"Are ten litres enough?" The medic offered.

"We'll make do. How much time do you need?"

"A couple of hours should be enough."

"All right, you work here. If anything happens, report to Jack or get through to me via earpod."

"Yes, sir." Mark mumbled and then he disappeared down the medical bay.

Now that everyone was back to work, Ianto modified the settings of his earpod and managed to contact Gwen.

"Gwen, it's Ianto. How's the police coping?"

"_The problems are almost all dealt with._" Gwen answered. "_The police's still suspicious of us, but I managed to make them secure the area at least. Oh! Andy called me. He said there are some flak jackets at the police department we should have a look at. I thought I'd better go and get them before I came back to base._"

"Are you returning from the village?"

"_Yeah, I am._"

"Then I'll go check the jackets, I'm closer. You get back here and take a copy of the UNIT warehouses list on my station along with the weapons one, Jack wants us to go and collect any useful item. I'll join you as soon as I finish with Andy."

"_Sounds fine, but… you're still dead remember?_"

Ianto's evil grin flashed out even though Gwen couldn't see it. "I'll be my own cousin, don't worry. Police officers have never been extremely brilliant."

"_Hey!_"

"Sorry" He said, not sounding sorry at all. "Had to say that, you know me. See you later."

Ianto reset the earpod settings and fled the room with a confident grin on his face.

Not so much time later the cog door opened again and Gwen entered the hub. She immediately went to the kitchen and was happy to find another mug of coffee with her name on it. Even if it was slightly cold, Ianto's coffee was always the best way to begin something new.

She drank it eagerly, until she realized that there were still three months to wait before having this quality of coffee back in the hub daily. Maybe if she was nice enough she could make Ianto prepare some more, then they would just have to find a way to keep it stored to make it through the next Ianto-less period. Alien tech had to be useful to something that wasn't mass-destruction, somehow.

Obviously she hadn't just missed Ianto's coffee, but the magical drink was certainly something that had always helped them to distinguish good days from bad days.

She even wrote a post-it about it for Rhys, when he failed to understand, yet again, the importance of the coffee routine in the Torchwood hub.

_No coffee=no Ianto= bad day, work would be done in twice the time it usually took them_

_Decaf=Ianto was angry=bad day, more often than not Jack was acting like a jerk_

_Coffee=Ianto=even if things weren't alright they could easily become _

_better after the coffee break_

She finished her cup of coffee and made her way to Jack's office, but she stopped at the glass door and wisely turned on her heels, as she heard Jack screaming back at what was apparently the UNIT general himself.

She went straight to what used to be Ianto's station, trusting to find the papers he had spoken about there. If later on she really felt the need to be briefed about the reason why they had to get UNIT stored material, Gwen was going to happily wait for a far less dangerous state of affairs.

She spotted Gwyneth at the computer station next to Ianto's, and she approached her with a wide knowing smile, as she took nonchalantly her copy of the lists.

"Hello there."

"He-hello?" The girl answered, shuddering as she observed suspiciously Gwen with the corner of her eye.

"You're named Gwyneth isn't it?"

"I am."

"You've gone for the family job?"

"Sort of."

"You're shy?"

"A bit."

The small exchange didn't satisfy Gwen at all. The girl was smarter than she seemed, but she hadn't been a police officer just to offer coffees around and she had a couple of aces up her sleeve.

"Just wanted to say _mae'n dda gen i gwrdd â ti__._"

_Pleased to meet you_ seemed innocent enough, and to Gwen's credit it finally got Gwyneth's full attention.

"Sorry?"

Gwen and Gwyneth stared at each other for long seconds in complete silence, leaving random onlookers to a game of find the differences.

"She doesn't speak Welsh." Alice supplied, passing by the two look-alikes on her way to the medical bay with something similar to two water rifles in her arms.

"How come she doesn't speak it?" Gwen asked puzzled, still staring at her double. And more than that, how come the other kid understood it enough to recognize she had even spoken Welsh? Her accent didn't even sound completely British, much less Welsh.

Now that she thought about it, even Gwyneth didn't sound Welsh at all, a bit Scottish maybe. Why would they ever have to move far away? She looked too much like her to not be her daughter, and she even had Rhys's surname.

Gwyneth's eyes became even larger as she felt the weight of Gwen's accusing glare pining down on her.

"I-Actually-You…" She stuttered.

In the end she simply got over her panic going back to the program she was writing, mumbling something similar to '_Timey wimey_' as an answer.

"How is it that everything is _timey wimey_ with you guys?" Gwen retorted, grimacing unhappily.

Mark and Alice both laughed from the medical bay.

"Because almost everything _is_ timey wimey," The doctor pointed out "But we like our future. We don't want to mess it around too much."

Gwen let the argument slide, realizing that there was no way to get proper information from the future lot like that, and left them alone to go raiding the UNIT facilities.

It took her some time to find them, but once she got there, the soldiers on guard gave her their leave to enter without a fuss. At first she believed that Jack's yelling had actually worked, but when she actually saw the amount of messily piled up devices, she feared that they simply hoped Torchwood would vanish under their rubbish to never reappear again.

Any hope to find what was on her list vanished the same moment she entered.

She wasted a good half an hour wandering among scrapes and failed experiments before help finally showed up. Help in a neat pinstriped suit.

"Ianto! You're a godsend as always. Please tell me you know at least how some of this stuff looks like. Everything seems the same to me!"

Ianto nodded and lead her to a high mountain of scraps in the middle of the facility. "If they left the items here in Cardiff there's a good chance that they won't work anymore regrettably. Let's have a look at the scraps at the beginning. If they are in that stack, this means they never touched them, so there are more chances for us to mend them. Misused items might be dangerous to deal with."

Gwen nodded and began searching among all the bits and pieces, following Ianto's directives.

"Andy's been useful, you know?" Ianto said sympathetically, hoping that Gwen would forgive him for his previous not-so-nice comment about police officers. "Jack's finding a way to upgrade those jacket with _'future tech'_ so that they will be less _contemporary_."

"Which one?" Gwen asked, as she threw away a burned piece of cable.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Jack you said." She clarified, not daring to look at him in the eyes. "Which one? Ours or…"

"Both of them actually." Ianto cut short, breathing hard because of the hard work he was doing. "Present time Jack found inside the archives something useful to mend them with, and now Gwyn has gone back to the future to cheat the time limit with our own future tech."

"Oh. Yeah. That girl." Gwen said drily, scowling as she recalled their previous conversation.

"Don't you like her?" Ianto asked bewildered, taking a glance at Gwen. She straightened her back and crossed her arms on her chest.

"She doesn't speak Welsh, how's that even possible, Ianto? Are you hiding something from us?"

"Nothing relevant to the mission." He answered evenly, without looking up at her. "You will know eventually, don't worry."

"Still that timey whatever stuff?"

"Yep."

"What does that even mean!?" She cried out in anger, resuming dutifully her research work.

"Means that time is always variable. I guess Jack heard the expression at a certain point from his Doctor or someone around him." Ianto shrugged. "We all simply followed his leading after a while."

"Sounds like us."

"It certainly does." Ianto grinned at her and he was pleased to find her smirking back at him with the complicity of an old friend.

After a couple of hours researching the labyrinth of scraps that were UNIT warehouses, they were both covered in dust and sweat, with barely three useful weapons laying down in front of them.

"Better than nothing, I suppose." Gwen considered with a frown.

"Don't bother Gwen. I'll personally strangle them if Jack doesn't get them first." Ianto put his hands on his hips and glared at the offending few items. "If they had a little more care of what they'd stolen we would have at least eighteen useful weapons."

"We could get them an archivist for Christmas." Gwen joked, trying to lighten the mood.

Ianto laughed heartily and helped her getting the weapons in the car. His earpod chose that exact moment to blip with high frequency pulses. He barely touched the surface and a young male voice answered back.

"_Steven here._ _Rhys and I are finished, Gwyn sent the software and we've just uploaded it. Rhys said he could call a few friends over to help making a camp. Do we have to wait for you here?_"

"Yeah, no reason for you to come back to Cardiff. We'll be there with the weapons as soon as we can."

"'_Key, but be quick. Rhys hates my T-shirt_."

Ianto rolled his eyes even though Steven couldn't see it. "Told you that wasn't a wise choice to wear. I can't even understand why you _have_ one."

"_Mam likes it._"

Ianto slammed his hand on his forehead and took a deep breath. He had to add 'insufferable' to the list of nicknames for the damn triad.

"Give us a break will you? Keep quiet, talk about rugby with Rhys and stop this bet nonsense, I know you're in this too. Really, it's getting older than Jack."

"_Yes, sir._"

The communication ended and Ianto tried to ignore Gwen's measuring stare as they finally entered her car.

"It must be difficult to have a team so young." She said with fake nonchalance, deep inside hoping for spoilers about the future.

"It's not like it seems." Ianto drawled.

"I guessed that much." She considered plainly. "You want to protect Gwyneth, because she's the youngest, but Alice doesn't seem much older."

"I wasn't much younger than Owen" He said, trying to defend himself stating the obvious. "Still he had two years of field experience more than me. _That_ made me stay behind at the beginning. Same rules apply for them."

Gwen realised that Ianto _was_ making sense, even though she had plenty of reasons to think that it wasn't the lack of experience the reason that had made Jack keep Ianto in the background. Thames House had only confirmed her reservations on the matter.

Nevertheless her data about the future Torchwood team was so few in number that she couldn't even make proper guesses about them. Her only hope to make one of the group spill the beans was vexing them with thoughtful small talk and well-placed questions.

She was an ex-police officer after all.

**X**

It took them more than they thought to go back to the hub, but nevertheless Ianto had swiftly managed to dodge each and every misleading topic Gwen offered for the entire extent of the trip.

When the two friends got inside the base, they found Jack, Alice and Mark knelt at the centre of it, all of them lost in thoughts in front of the bunch of weaponry and alien tech they had gotten their hands on.

"Hi there, sun and moon of my life. Please, tell me you've got something for us." Jack flirted as a way of greeting to his best friend and lover.

Gwen and Ianto added their part of devices to the lot and joined the group, closing the circle. As soon as they sat down, Jack closed up the space between him and Ianto, casually resting a hand over his shoulder as he leaned forwards to steal a look the new additions.

"Though worse." He considered. "What about the rest?"

"Ruined by explosions, time or negligence." Ianto explained with a sigh. "Gwen reckons we could provide them an archivist for Christmas."

Jack laughed so much he actually had to hold on Ianto for support. "We can find them a couple of spare ones in Glasgow."

Both Ianto and Gwen tried to contain their mirth, failing miserably at it. Each time they made a joke against Torchwood Two, they swore that it was going to be the last time, but in the end the mocking never got too old and they kept laughing behind their backs all the same.

"With the stuff sweetly offered back by UNIT, what do we have in the end?" Ianto asked, resting his head against his lover's.

"Two venom vaporizers, a 35th century bow and arrows, two 48th century molecular disruptors, three laser guns, a 27th century tommy-gun, some sonic grenades, a plasma katana, a ray phaser and my beautiful 51st century sonic blaster with a new set of recharged batteries." Jack concluded his speech kissing lovingly a half moon shaped gun. "It seems I own your Jack for this beauty."

"I think you're supposed to give it back in the end." Ianto considered, raising an eyebrow.

"Still, it feels good in my hands right now." Jack grinned, obscenely gripping the blaster in his hand and making his lover blush in the process.

"Many things feel good in your hands." Ianto whispered mischievously in his ear as his eyes met with Jack's.

"I can name a few…" Jack retorted sensually, his voice soft and tempting.

"Oi, hardcore version of Romeo and Juliet!" Gwen interrupted, smirking at them. "Could you please keep focusing on the weapons? There are children here."

"Really now?" Mark raised an eyebrow at her, snorting. "That never stopped them. I gave up on that only because they're still good for placing bets."

In the meanwhile, the '_child_' in question was too busy checking the state and number of the arrows to join the conversation herself.

"I'll take the bow. I'm good with bows." Alice commented randomly, successfully changing the subject.

Ianto took the chance and cleared his voice, as he scanned the items at hand.

"Well, I could take the katana… Just in case of short range fighting. And… Maybe one of the guns?"

"I want the tommy-gun! I loved it last time with the Daleks." Gwen chirped happily.

"Yeah yeah, take one of the guns too, will you? I don't trust those things."Jack reprimanded her. "Jesus, you became a war-aholic lately."

"Not war, just danger." She corrected proudly.

Jack shook his head and took some of the weapons, encouraging the others to take the remnants.

"We have a minivan to catch, let's don't leave it rusting while it's waiting for us. Everyone's ready for a road trip?"

"A minivan? What's wrong with the SUV?" Gwen protested, gathering weapons until her arms were full.

"Too much weaponry. The five of us simply wouldn't fit." Jack explained. "Mark? Don't forget the antidote and the modified flak jackets! All the other kids? Simply hurry up and get out."

With a final _"Yes, sir"_ everyone moved outside, trying to get to the minivan without getting too much attention. The residents of Cardiff Bay, although, seemed to have already noticed that Torchwood was back in action, so they kindly pretended to ignore them and their noticeable armoury as usual. Gwen even greeted one of the locals, who cheered on them, happy that they were finally back where they belonged.

Once they were all seated inside the car though, she finally noticed that someone was missing.

"Wait a minute, what about my look-alike?"

"I escorted her back to the future." Alice answered, happily showing off Jack's Vortex Manipulator on her wrist.

"Wait a minute, are there two of those things?" Gwen wondered. "I thought the boy with that horrible T-shirt had it."

"There's only one" Alice answered innocently. " But I stole it from my brother before he went to the countryside with your husband."

All except Gwen laughed, and Jack even offered her his hand to high five.

"I like the girl Ianto, good choice for the team."

Ianto raised scornfully his eyebrow at him and simply shook his head. "No doubt you would like her."

Jack glanced at Ianto with the corner of his eyes. "Do I need to read something in between the lines?"

"You could obviously, but you'd better not." He answered cryptically, with a small but sincere smile that temporarily quietened Jack's doubts.

"Back to my wrist-strap, why is it even working?" Jack demanded, offering a change of subject. "The Doctor keeps breaking it each time I manage to make it work again."

Ianto stifled a laugh at the well summarised history of Jack and his Vortex Manipulator.

"Oh don't worry, he will keep doing that. I remember this one time in which you had barely found a way to make it function again, and he popped out of nowhere inside your makeshift laboratory. He walked to you smiling and saying something along the lines of '_Old Jack! I popped in for a visit, hope you don't mind_'. Then he just took your wrist-strap, and while he was saying '_Came here to say hello and prevent you from hopping around,_' he deactivated it again. He disappeared back in his TARDIS and… There he was. Gone again."

"Ha… ha ha…" Jack pretended to laugh, not quite pleased that his life in the future was still bounded by the Doctor's will to keep him grounded. Still, if there was Ianto at his side, he didn't mind the domestication. "So, you're saying we just got lucky this time?"

"Yep." Ianto confirmed with a satisfied grin on his lips.

"I hate the man." Jack concluded with a small smile still tugging at his lips.

As they reached the small village in the countryside, the night began falling around them. Luckily, Rhys had actually managed to get a couple of friends bring food and tents for them all, as soon as he knew they had to stay overnight.

"Good work Rhys. Surely tents are more comfortable than sleeping in the van or the lorry."

"Som'times I'm useful too, it seems." Rhys complained, shaking suspiciously the hand Jack was offering him and patting him friendly on the shoulder.

He gave him a couple of the sandwiches he was holding in a basket, but as soon as he spotted Gwen, he ran forwards to hug and kiss his wife.

After he was sure to have left her breathless enough, he went to greet Ianto and the others as well, handing out food and handshakes.

"Great kid you've there Ianto." He stated happily when he had finished his round of greetings. "He should go professional, he should."

"What?" Ianto asked confused, choking on his sandwich.

"That Steven! He's a rugby monster, he is. He even managed to beat Banana Boat when he came to bring the tents. Lost ten quid my poor fella."

Ianto jaw dropped in disbelief, and then he turned to glare at Steven, currently harassing his sister to get back the stolen wrist-strap.

"Steven! What've I told you about those damn bets!?"

"I thought it was just for the sex related ones!"

Ianto felt suddenly too old and tired to win this. "I was including all kind of bets. Alice, give him back that Vortex Manipulator before I crush it with my own hands and I trap you both in the bloody past countryside!"

Apparently he had managed to sound angry enough to make them both behave. Solved the most bothering problem at hand, Ianto tried to remember which ones were the others left, until a soft hand on his shoulder distracted him from his concerns.

"You're tired, mind if I lead your team's retreat for the night?"

Ianto smiled at his life saviour and shook his head. Jack grinned at him and clapped his hands together before walking forward, where everyone could see him properly.

"So, we have three tents guys, and you all can already guess how we're going to split up." He chirped with a playful wink. "Future Torchwood? There are three of you, so you can get the bigger one. Be noisy, and daddy Jack will be _really_ cross, is that clear?"

The future Torchwood team nodded at unison, pretending to stay professional as they moved inside the tent, even though the corner of their lips were twitching, trying to contain a smirk.

"Gwen, Rhys. Choose your own, but remember that tomorrow will be a long day, so no extenuating activities." The married couple nodded and got their own tent, but not before Gwen gave them an '_I know you're going to do it too_' grin and Jack smirked at her.

Ianto and Jack followed suit, taking the last free tent. As soon as they got inside, Ianto crashed exhausted on the mattress, while Jack laid beside him, staring quietly at his lover. Feeling the captain's eyes on him, he crooked his head enough to look tiredly at him. If Jack could die once and for all and could do it that exact moment, he would have died happy.

"You have just a couple of grey hair," Jack noticed, misplacing some loose strands of Ianto's hair. "They look good on you."

Ianto blushed faintly and looked away. "I-I should go and check if the kids are sleeping."

Jack shook his head and closed his arms around Ianto, moving him so that he was laying half over him, his head relaxed on the captain's chest. Like that they could both hear and feel their frenzied heartbeats, as they let them lull away all the tiredness and the doubts they still held in their minds.

"I understand you don't want proper sex, but could you at least give me this night? Just sleep like this would be wonderful." Uncertainty marred Jack's voice and Ianto could even feel him swallow.

"I- I think I can stretch my bounds a bit farther."

Not receiving any answer from his lover, Ianto looked up, searching for Jack's eyes, and found the captain staring back at him. He could read on his face how hope was mixing with fear and regret.

"How far?" Jack said in the end.

Ianto smiled at him and cupped his cheek, not breaking the eye contact with him.

"How about snogging you 'till the end of the universe?"

Jack's lips tightened in a pleased, yet awkward smile. "Wouldn't mind that, but what made you change your mind?"

The obvious question made Ianto look away, but Jack realised it was more out guilt than because of the usual shyness due to their heart racing too fast for the unorthodox relationship they shared. He had to admit that the thought hurt him a bit.

"I-I know I'm not supposed to let you get close to me, but I can't look away when you need me… I love you too much to leave you suffer alone. No matter if I know you'll be alright in the end. It's the same pain I feel when you get killed… I know you are most certainly going to come back, but it keeps hurting… And not being able to help scares me."

Jack tightened his hold on Ianto and made his lover face him again, capturing his lips in a hungry and desperate kiss. He deepened it, as his hand made quick work of the shirt buttons, leaving him free to explore Ianto's plain chest. He slowly got rid of both the jacket and the shirt, leaving on Ianto only the red tie that many wicked ideas had produced.

As Jack kept his assault going, Ianto trembled in his arms, burying his hands in his lover's hair and soothing him with masterful caresses where the neck met the shoulder, a gesture so familiar and so missed that the captain almost felt his eyes water again.

Instead he focused on the snippet of pleasant present in his arms, letting Ianto's familiar scent lull him far away from his recent past and the dread of the imminent future. Another piece of his future that left him all by himself.

He counted the ribs, traced the swells and the hollows shaping his lover's chest, teased all the places he knew his man liked best and lost himself in the unexpected gift that added on the one life he treasured the most among all the ones he had lived: the one with Ianto Jones.

They both knew they wouldn't last much longer awake, so they tried to keep the kiss as light and sweet as they could, realizing that as tempting as it was to give in into physical, they needed their sleep.

Predictably they both fell asleep at some point during the kiss. Their lips still lingering on one another's. The fatigue and the trials of the day had finally won them over, but all the same Jack couldn't remember the last time he had fallen asleep so relaxed and loved: not even sex had ever made him achieve this sense of complete serenity and belonging.


	5. Back and forth from death

Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, no copyright infringement intended. If you still want to sue first bring Ianto back to Jack.

Warnings: Spoilers for almost everything except novels and comics. Not beta-read and English's not my native language, but beta-tested anyway by SOY.

**Back and forth from death**

The morning came, waking the two lovers with old and new fears, the pleasant familiarity of two bodies entangled in a warm embrace, two snorts and a pleased snigger.

Jack and Ianto glared at the three newcomers, who were disturbing their slow coming back to consciousness, as Mark collected ten quid each from the Jones siblings.

"Gwen's making breakfast and according to the programme, the bad guys will show up in two hours." The doctor explained cheerfully, gesturing to his companions to follow him. "Let's go back before they are fully awake, losers."

As Silently as they had gotten inside, the kids left the tent, leaving behind an annoyed Jack to groan at the unpleasant start of his day. He now understood Ianto's conflicting relationship with his team, especially with Mark.

He was too much like Owen even for his own likings, so, considering the never loving relationship between Ianto and their zombie doctor, Jack didn't have to guess the reason why they had become natural enemies.

At a closer inspection though it wasn't exactly Owen the person he would associate with Mark's general attitude. Sarcasm aside actually, he saw him more along the lines of an extremely simple and common man grown up in the suburb of London and with lots of unexpressed potential.

Maybe cynicism was simply an acquired taste for someone unlucky enough to become the Torchwood doctor.

In the meantime, Ianto had closed his eyes again with a sigh, clearly accustomed to such come-outs from his team-members. His lover's distraught expression was enough to make the captain smile at the display as he bent down to kiss him on the cheek. Ianto hummed at the pleasant sensation and turned his head a little more to the side, leaving Jack full access to his cheek and neck.

The tie he was still wearing fell even more askew and made Jack notice something bright, gracing Ianto's neckline. He let his finger graze softly the skin right above the necklace, following the golden chain until he reached what he thought was a pendant, and took it in his hand.

As he looked at it better though, he realized it was a ring. An ornate platinum band crossed for all its length by a double line of tiny emeralds. Inside he could barely make out a tiny Welsh inscription that he couldn't read.

He let it go and stood up hastily in order to search for his own shirt and coat. Sensing the abrupt change in Jack's mood, Ianto opened his eyes and sit up to stare questioningly at his lover.

"We need to be ready for the battle…" Jack tried to say evenly. "For once we actually know when they will arrive, better make good use of it…"

The fact that the words trailed out as a mere whisper wasn't lost on Ianto.

"We have enough time." Ianto said tentatively. "Something's happened?"

His lover from four years before had come back from the future, telling him he loved him, and that he would definitely come back for him in three months, but if he had to be honest and admit the truth, Ianto had never really told him whether they were back together, or not.

And when Ianto had died, he had died broken heart because of his doubts. Jack's secrets and fears had been killing him way before the 456 poison did.

This Ianto seemed more confident, but why was that? Had he become more accustomed to his secrets or had Jack finally given up and told him _absolutely_ everything?

What if it was _Ianto_ the one who had given up on him?

The last one certainly sounded the most reasonable solution given his lover's shorter life span, and that would make everything fall back into its place, considering that Ianto _had_ predicted some difficult choices to make.

On the other hand, Ianto was clearly still in love with him, but it was also true that in the past he had given himself to Jack while he still loved Lisa, simply because he thought it was the only thing he could do to achieve his own goals.

Unfortunately, if he asked Ianto for specific answers, he knew that he would get none, because of the entire timey wimey thing.

"I-I just don't do marriages…" Jack said in the end, more to himself than to his lover.

Ianto stared at him, trying to make sense out of those vaguely familiar words and searching his memory for something he knew Jack had told him a long time ago.

"Ye-yeah you don't do weddings and children…" Ianto acknowledged hesitantly, still not quite sure about any link between the current situation and the argument he was vaguely recalling.

"But it is fine, though." The Welshman hastily added, eventually guessing that Jack might have had still a few doubts from what had troubled their relationship before his demise. "We hadn't had enough time to talk about that because, well, Thames House happened, but after you told us about your daughter and grandson, well… It's obvious you'd find it hard managing relationships at that level."

Jack kept watching him, as Ianto moved to stand right in front of him, unsure if it was better explaining the truth or if it would be more proper to let him believe he was simply conflicted about their past.

"I'm not the Ianto you need to talk to, though. We'll have time to get over this. And anyway," Ianto added, taking Jack's hands in his own, "As long as we live our life to the fullest day by day… Doesn't an hour together have the same value of three months, and don't three months have the same value of five hundred years?"

Jack smiled sadly at his words. "Not if you're the one left behind without the chance of ending the pain… Forever…"

"But at least we know we've enjoyed it the most. No remorse left. We can do it _properly_ this time."

Jack nodded and tried to make his smile a little more sincere. "I wouldn't mind it… As long as you will have me?"

Ianto took his lips in a sweet kiss that deepened quickly as they tried to cross the gap of their secrets and fears with their bodies, something they both hadn't done in a long time.

After they parted, Jack lead their foreheads resting against one another's for comfort as they caught back their breath.

"Your kindness is a drug Ianto…_You_ are a drug…"

"Then let's go and get your drug back, sir." Ianto told him, his eyes shining with determination. "If they destroy the Earth, all is lost."

As Jack smirked at him with the cheeky attitude he had come to love over the years, Ianto knew he would do everything in his power to protect that small bit of future that was supposed to change their lives and their relationship forever.

No matter what it would take him.

**X**

"It took you a long bloody time." Gwen greeted them, smirking as she caught the couple walking towards them.

"Still nothing happened," The two siblings remarked sadly from her side, picking at their eggs and bacon. They seemed ready to start a long argument of disapproval, but Ianto's glare froze them in their place, so they simply kept sulking.

The two lovers sit down opposite of them, and Rhys gave them both a plate with their breakfast along with a reproachful shaking of his head.

"News from the software?" Jack asked, stifling a laugh as he started munching on a piece of dark bread.

"It says they're coming in an hour. Nothing more." Rhys explained seriously, as he reached Gwen with some of the empty dishes.

"Everyone's already chosen his or her own weapon?" Jack tried again, this time using the most cheerful tone he could muster.

Gwen and Rhys simply looked at each other, probably fearing another 456 messing up now that they knew the fight was imminent. On the other hand, Mark was back to his unobtrusive mood after the joys of winning bets Jack wasn't aware of, and the siblings were still reduced to silence after Ianto's reproach.

This was certainly not what he imagined to be a _catching-aliens_ camping trip.

"Yeah, but where do we wait for them? What could be the best place?" Gwen eventually retorted, as she tried to focus on something practical. "They seemed quite big."

"They _are_ big, but the teleport trap should hold them long enough to let us finish them off." Ianto explained evenly. "If anything goes wrong, we can always channel the power of the machine against them, so that it will burn everything inside the magnet."

"Can't we do that right from the beginning?" Gwen asked expectantly. She certainly loved a little bit of danger, but if there was something that could solve things faster, she wouldn't say no to it.

"One function excludes the other," Ianto told her, trying to reassure her somehow with a smile. "And we have to draw them here with the machine or we can't hope to destroy them. If we don't, they could appear everywhere on Earth and endanger the population."

"Ok, then." Jack said thoughtfully, as he put together all the information he held. "According to your data the weakest point is the head, isn't it?"

Jack waited for Ianto to nod and then continued. "So I would suggest we all get to the upper floors of the highest houses and we attack from there. I saw the magnetic circle before, Rhys and Steven basically build it in the centre of the village and the highest buildings are luckily right around there."

They all approved his plan, but after the tactical topic ended, the usual silence began to fall again around them. Of all the people, the one Jack least expected to keep it and avert his eyes from him was Ianto. He tried to let the hurt go, but he only lasted until everyone had finished eating, then he fixed his eyes sternly on his lover to question him.

"Ianto, how do we do the functions switch on that thing? Is there a remote control or something?"

They both stared silently at each other in front of the other's worried gaze, until Ianto wetted nervously his lower lip and decided to return Jack's even look with a more challenging glare.

"You don't have to worry. _I _will do it if it comes down to that."

"Ianto, I'm still your boss." Jack threatened, now effectively worried and angry.

Even thought it was typical of his lover to withhold information if there were important reasons, usually said reason was shared at least with him when there were tactics involved. Obviously there was the timey wimey problem, but somehow he doubted this particular lack of explanation had something to do with destroying timelines.

"You gave me the leadership over the teams during this mission." Ianto answered lightly, earning Jack unsatisfied frown as an answer.

"I won't let you put yourself in danger again."

Ianto's eyes widened and Jack was sure he had finally hit the right nerve.

The other team-mates felt the air around them cooling down, and they all looked at one another, wondering how to get out of there or change the subject before the fight broke out.

Eventually Gwen had enough of their glaring, and knowing too well that soon a pretty loud outburst would follow, she stood up nonchalantly.

"Perfect, they keep bitching at each other like the first time we were here…" She muttered to her husband, low enough not to be heard by the others. "It must be the place."

She walked towards the equipment stock and Rhys followed her, pretending to assist her equipping her gear. "What d'you mean?"

"When we were here the first time, Ianto managed to make us all feel guilty for having shot his cybernetic girlfriend, and simultaneously to insult Jack, denying that sort of 'relationship' they were developing behind our backs. In _three_ simple words. I'll tell you, never cross the man, he's smart enough to get to you in less than that, he is."

"Girlfriend!? I thought he was gay like Jack."

Gwen snorted and showed Rhys hands away from the zip of his flak jacket to arrange it herself.

"As far as I know, none of them is. As Tosh put it, Jack would shag anything gorgeous enough… I guess we would label him as pansexual, even though I actually think labels are more appropriate for children at the day-care than to grown up adults searching for willing shags."

"And what about Ianto? That Clem said he was gay. I heard 'im." Rhys stated proudly, despite fighting to say the words as his wife struggled with his collar.

"He said he was queer, not gay actually. Queer has come to mean people who simply fall in love… no restriction on gender, colour, race, appearances. I would stick with _that_ meaning considering his girlfriend mentioned something similar when she was alone with Ianto. I've seen the CCTV of the last conversation they were having right before we had to shoot her."

Gwen sighed and with a last smile at her husband, she put a venom vaporizer in his hand and slapped his butt. "Now you can go. I can label you gorgeous if you want to?"

Rhys laughed, but as they moved to make it back to the camp, they were stopped by the three members of the future Torchwood team, who were escaping the fight that had finally exploded between the leading couple.

"War in heaven. You better stay here, believe me." Mark said, his eyes sparkling as noticed that no one had already claimed the disruptor.

"They were fine right before breakfast, what the heck happened to those two?" Rhys reasoned.

"Too many secrets, so little time." Steven chanted as an afterthought.

Gwen and Rhys stared at him as he shortened the belt of his venom vaporizer, expecting him to continue.

"What?" The boy asked, with a raised eyebrow. "_That's_ their problem. In less than 5 hours one will be gone and the other can't even be honest with him about feelings, fears and mushy turmoil before being left alone again. That's not too difficult to guess."

"What makes you think Jack's scared?" Gwen retorted suspiciously.

She had finally got a glimpse of the old Jack, and she was certain that this time things were getting better once and for all. They all knew that soon Ianto would be back, so not even grief could be an excuse to fall into desperation again.

Their leader was a strong one, no matter what the young man was implying.

"What makes you think he isn't?" Steven challenged her with a smirk.

"Kiss and make up time guys." Alice interrupted them, cheeringly noticing from her well chosen position that Jack and Ianto were actually reaching some sort of compromise. "Road clear and time to die!"

"Wasn't that supposed be 'time to _fight_'?" Rhys argued, staring reproachfully at the girl.

"Semantics," She deadpanned, offering a tight lipped smile afterwards.

A short time later, Ianto and Jack joined them to equip themselves with the remaining gear. The air between the two was still dense, but now they were at least acting politely towards one another.

"Time to go." Jack stated happily as the obvious moral winner of the fight, and then he proceeded to explain everyone the position they were supposed to keep in front of a quite annoyed Ianto.

Between one sharp remark and the other, the two lovers had agreed on how to split up their team members inside the deserted houses, and on the choice of the buildings to occupy. The theme of the discussion, though, wasn't the topic of their fight.

Truth to be told, Jack had basically agreed to everything Ianto had suggested, but in exchange he wanted to be paired up with the Welshman, no matter how much his lover was trying to make him understand that it was an inappropriate distribution of forces.

Reasonably, Ianto had pointed out that if something happened on their side, everything would be left to Gwen and that wouldn't be fair to her, but the captain hadn't bulged a bit. In the end Jack had plainly blackmailed him, demanding him to explain in details their relationship in the future in return for giving up his demands. After long minutes of silence, Ianto had grudgingly capitulated.

Ianto couldn't know whether Jack's idea was based on fear of deception on his side, or if it had been prompted by Jack's need to be certain he would be safe. Truth was that it was pretty annoying, even though the captain had approved the unorthodox idea of pairing up Gwen with Rhys and to leave the other three by themselves without a single question.

Feeling the tension between the two lovers, everyone obediently got to their positions and prepared themselves to greet the aliens, hoping that war could make the miracle and solve whatever had broken between Jack and Ianto.

Long minutes passed, until a piercing alarm rang in their earpods and comms.

The circle of tubes and wires lightened up as the first alien appeared, making clear that the fight was beginning.

The invaders were in no way different from the ones showed by Ianto's slides and this made Jack, Gwen and Rhys a little more confident about what they could actually expect. Moreover, the magnet seemed to hold on efficiently, even though they didn't use the proper metal to build it and there was a great group of aliens waiting to get through it.

The machine was big enough to contain only one of the aliens at time, allowing them plenty of time to focus on a single creature before having to fight the other.

As soon as the first one crashed dead on the neglected square of the village, another one had the chance to materialize above it, crushing his dead companion and splattering green oily blood and intestines everywhere.

The fight went on for a while with the same routine, and each time the aliens became wilder and bigger, creating huge earthquakes as weirdly coloured substances drenches the houses up to the upper floors in which the Torchwood members had hidden themselves.

Communication among them wasn't needed at all, thanks to the detailed data they had gotten from Ianto and the accurate planning of the situation. Still unforeseen events were bound to happen. Jack was the first to realize that, as a drop of blood fell few inches from his foot and burned a hole in the wood floor.

"Do not let those violet chunks get you!" Jack cried through the comm. "It's acid!"

"Crap, we never knew their flesh and blood were deadly too!" Ianto swore, hiding behind the wall next to his lover, as he took aim before shooting.

"You didn't make tests on it!?" Jack protested incredulous.

"Hey, nothing survived that time!" Ianto tried to defend himself. "We had to burn everything down."

A young girly voice echoed in their earpods, efficiently stopping the quarrel. "_They keep coming! How many are left!_?"

Ianto mentally redid his counting, as he watched another alien fell and end up crushed by the following one.

"Twenty more. Keep your positions and don't move!"

"_We can't keep going like this! We'll be out of everything before long!_"

"Alice, don't move!" Ianto cried with panic searing his voice. "Alice!"

The transmission stopped dead and Ianto kicked the broken bedside table next to him in anger. Jack looked at the top floor of the house where she was supposed to hold her position and he saw Alice trying to get back to the ground floor through an external staircase.

Dread crossed through his body too, as he noticed a makeshift scarecrow dressed with the flak jacket she was supposed to wear in her place to keep the enemy distracted. Even though her strategy seemed to work pretty well, that still left her vitals completely unprotected from the alien venom and eventual chunks of the exploding creatures.

"She's going to get herself killed!" Jack cried. "What she wants to do, anyway!? What's down there?"

Before Ianto could answer him, a strangled cry reached their ears, freezing both of them on the spot.

"_Tad_?" Steven's uncertain voice came from Ianto's earpod. "_Alice's down_."

Jack tried to reach for his lover, but Ianto scrambled hastily out of his arms throwing the earpod at him and rushing down the stairs. The captain followed him, ignoring the twinge of pain in his heart at Ianto's panic-stricken reaction.

He found his lover downstairs, getting the injured girl inside the house, but he could find no words to comfort him as he saw the still bubbling burn from the green acid on her chest. Just as he was about to suggest he could go and get Mark, his own comm beeped and the communications opened.

This time it was Rhys.

"_Jack!? We've got to go! Gwen's injured!_"

"What!? How's she?" Jack asked, panicking.

"_Just a scratch Jack, but the bloody venom hurts. Can't even hold a bloody gun!_" Gwen's voice, thank God.

"Is Mark there?"

"_Yeah. He gave her the antidote and something else for the burn. We're moving back to the camp, but he should be back to his position in five._"

Jack looked back at his lover and their eyes met for a second before Ianto focused back on Alice. After a while the Welshman just shook his head.

"Steven's alone out there, he needs back up." Ianto whispered.

The captain nodded and confirmed the order for Mark to go back to his position. He didn't want to think about what his lover's words meant. Jack knew he had to go back to his position too to keep fighting, but somehow he couldn't stop staring at Ianto, still holding the girl tight in his arms as he rocked her back and forth and cleaned wordlessly the wound she got from the acid.

Jack's heart was in a total havoc.

Pain for seeing his Ianto in pain. Sadness for the loss of a girl so young. Anger for the foolish act that brought her to this. Betrayal for what all of this could mean.

For all Jack tried to not to think about that, it was quite obvious now who the girl was, even though the difference in ages was supposed to tell him a different story. What were you supposed to say in such circumstances? '_Sorry for your loss_' was something near to a joke and '_Did you cheat on me?_' was a little too harsh considering the situation, but he couldn't think of any alternative.

"_Shwmae, cariad?_"

_How are you, love?_

Ianto's voice was barely a whisper, but it cut through Jack's thoughts and made him finally look at the lifeless girl. Pale, but still darker skinned than Ianto, dark blonde hair scattered in disarray around her, clear blue eyes now closed like she was sleeping.

Jack knelt down next to them and put his hand on the one Ianto was letting rest on her neck, feeling the relief for not being cast away from his lover mix with the end of any hope for the girl. There was no pulse at all.

Jack swallowed, trying to find any gesture that could be helpful, but he couldn't do anything more than take in Ianto's red but still determinate eyes.

Determination, not desperation. He knew what a sad and desperate Ianto looked like, so why did he just seem… waiting?

Before Jack could realize what was happening, he felt a pulse under his hand, and suddenly Alice gasped for air, coughing safely in Ianto's caring arms.

Ianto let out the breath he didn't know he was holding, and patted her gently on her back, but Jack simply stared at the girl, relieved and horrified at the same time. What the hell was going to happen in the damn future?

"Jack?" Ianto told him pleadingly. "Stay with her, please. I'll go finish this myself, before someone else gets killed."

Without waiting for a reply, he unshed the plasma katana tightened at his side and run towards the front door of the house, but Jack was quick enough to grab his hand and stop him.

"I don't care what will happen to us in the future! I told you I won't let you behave foolishly!"

His words shocked Ianto, but Jack still wasn't finished. "I already lost you once, I won't lose you again!"

Even though the tone was harsh and demanding, Ianto let a small smile grace his lips. "I'll come back to you, Jack. Trust me, everything will be fine. I'm coming back."

Jack was so puzzled hearing his own words from a long time ago repeated back at him, that let Ianto's hand go, leaving his lover free to run outside. What actually awakened him from his shock was his own voice, coming from Ianto's earpod that he was still holding in his hand.

"_Ianto?! Ianto for God's sake will you answer me? Ianto!_"

"I-Ianto is… I think he's going to-" Jack's voice trembled as he spoke in the earpod microphone. He heard a pained sigh on the other side of the receiver. At least they understood each other without him having to say anything aloud. Good thing they were the same person.

"_Jack? Could you do me a favour?_"

"I- Yeah…"

"_Stay with him._" His voice seemed sad and heartbroken. "_It's horrible dying alone_-"

Whatever else future Jack wanted to tell him was lost in the air. The earpod was forgotten on the floor as Jack run after Ianto to stop his lover. Once in the open air, he looked around, hoping he was still in time to save him, but unfortunately he located him only when Ianto was already inserting the katana in a small slice in the metal inside the magnet circle that was trapping the aliens.

As soon as Ianto turned it to his side to invert the flow of the power, sparkles began lighting up from the machine all around him and a bolt of energy crossed his body, disrupting his suit as well as his nerves and muscles. Jack felt his own life drained out of his body as he got to his lover just in time to prevent him from falling.

"Ianto let me do it, I can survive anything!"

"No way!" Ianto answered, gripping the katana even tighter as Jack's hands wrapped around his own, trying to take their place. "You will have me back three months, no matter what I have to do to give you that!"

"Tell me what to do! I can do it myself!"

"I won't let you die! It hurts too much the both of us!" Ianto shouted, managing with difficulty to turn a bit more to the right the make-shift lever.

"Let me go!" With his last final cry, the katana moved a couple of grades more, finally activating the secondary function.

The energy flow running around the aliens wavered and rearranged itself in rays that burn quickly everything inside the circle, reducing everything to dust.

As soon as there were no more enemies to kill though, the blast of the explosion made the energy rebound on itself, hitting with all its power everything around the magnet, including Jack and Ianto, who fell few feet backwards with a loud cry.

Once again the two lovers laid curled up one next to the other, still almost embracing one another.

The three members of the future Torchwood team came running and closed up around them, with no clue about what they were supposed to do. They glanced nervously at each other, until finally Mark mustered the courage to check their vital signs, unfortunately only confirming their suspicions.

Both of them were dead. Again together.

With a last glance at one another, the two siblings took them in their arms, one each, and held them tight, hiding their reddening eyes in their necks.

Waiting.

After a few minutes Jack gasped for air in Alice's tight embrace. He looked up at her and tried to remember what had happened, but when everything finally fell back to its place, panic and desperation assailed him.

"Where's Ianto? How's he?"

Alice shook his head and nodded towards her brother, who was smoothing some loose strands from Ianto's forehead. Jack's eyes widened, and he escaped her arms to reach his lover's side, urgently taking him from Steven's hold. Now that he looked closely at the young man Jack couldn't stop asking himself how he could not have noticed the similarities between him and Ianto.

Same chubby face, same dark curly hear, same milky white skin. Take away the union jack T-shirt that no Welshman would dare to wear, make his lips fuller and change the slight different shade of blue their eyes held, and they could easily pass for twins.

He tried his best to not be jealous of the woman that had owned those odd features in Steven's figure, but that really was the last of his concerns in front of the newly dead body of his lover. No matter if in three months he would have him back, he had lost him. Thrice.

He found himself ready to give up everything, even their love and their relationship if this could have given Ianto back to him. Even watching him from afar would have been enough, as long as he could still see his reassuring smile, as long as he could hear those beautiful Welsh vowels telling him that everything would be fine.

No matter what form, he _needed_ the other man's support, and if that meant he had to accept a simple friendship, he would happily follow that path.

Tears flew freely down his face as he touched Ianto's lips with his thumb and then let the hand trail down to caress his neck, shuddering as he felt nothing. He bent down and kissed his lips softly, still grasping his neck for dear life like he was used to do when they were together.

Then a pulse.

Jack retired just in time to not crash his head against Ianto's as he sat up, taking a deep breath and shaking, as he grasped his panicked lover's arms.

"Oh my God…" Jack whispered, completely horrified.

As soon as he got a grip of himself, Ianto tried to manage a guilty smile in Jack's direction. "Surprise?"

The light joke could do nothing to shake the overwhelming desperation out of Jack though.

"You aren't… You can't be cursed too… Not you, please, not you."

Ianto guiltily looked away from Jack as took tentatively his lover's hands in his own.

"I am… But if there are two of us, doesn't it make it a gift?"

Jack shook his head firmly. "I've never wanted you to be condemned to eternal life. Please, at least tell me I didn't do this to you."

Ianto pulled Jack in his arms and let his lover's head rest right above his heart. They stayed like that a bit, enough to let the captain recover from his initial shock.

"You're not responsible of this, don't worry. And neither I am. I told you, it was a gift. And willing or not, whoever brings the two of us together again is the bearer of a gift, not a curse."

"You tricked me out the House of the Dead. You _chose_ to stay dead." Jack complained resentfully, and Ianto tightened his grip on him.

"I told you I can't know that… But I was dead, wasn't I? Think about Owen, think about yourself at the beginning. You can't expect us all to be like Suzie. I can guess my biggest concern was to get you out alive in a living universe." Ianto speculated. "What I know for sure is the fact that I will need you when I'll come back to the livings… I'll need you a lot, because death really freezes everything in its path."

Ianto's soft smile was everything he needed. In that moment he actually realized what he had meant when he had told the real captain Jack Harkness he had to live day by day. He tried to lean in for a kiss, but a soft cough behind them interrupted them.

"Tad? Mam wants to talk to you." Steve said, blushing as he held out his earpod.

"Oh…" They said at the unison. Awkwardly Jack passed it to his lover and even more awkwardly Ianto accepted it, taking a few steps from the group for some well needed private talk.

"So…" Jack tried to let the tension drop, left alone with the future Torchwood team. "The son of a Welshman wearing a Union Jack T-shirt. Good way to hide your identity."

Jack's forced and utterly embarrassed laugh was answered with a quite more sincere one.

"I wasn't hiding anything, you like Union Jack T-shirts. There's nothing bad in wanting to make a good impression on your past mam."

Jack's face fell and his eyebrows rose in shock. "I'm sorry?"

The siblings looked at each other inquisitively and then turned surprised to Jack.

"When you bought me this," Steven explained pointing at his shirt. "You said an old friend of yours had one similar, so I assumed you must have liked this design for quite some time."

"Yeah, I _do_ like it. Rose looked lovely in it… But I still can't get what this has to do with your mam."

"Looks like it takes two immortals to have one." Steven teased smugly, now understanding what Jack's issue was. His posture was a perfect mimicking of one of his best _'Now I got you'_ ones.

"Well played, kids" Jack argued, laughing stiffly and wondering why the siblings thought he was so easy to play. "But I don't do children. I had enough that one time, and as far as I know Ianto's not equipped for that."

Ianto walked back to them with an amused grin on his face.

"While I'd like for you to be right about that, you don't always have the chance to have a say into it. My Jack says thanks for trying your best to protect me by the way."

"We use protections and there's the fucking rain." Jack retorted, now sincerely scared since he knew his lover well enough to understand when he was joking and this didn't seem the case. Giving birth was way worse than dying and coming back to life, and there was no way in Heaven and Earth he was going through that hell again.

"Yeah, but you know…" Ianto explained sheepishly. "I bought you an umbrella, because you kept ruining that beautiful coat of yours, and a couple of times we may have sort of… forgotten about the rest."

His vague explanation earned him only a raised eyebrow.

"That makes one, not two." Jack replied, attentively searching for any fault in Ianto's logic. Unfortunately he knew himself and his lover well enough to realize that it made a lot of sense, knowing them.

"Well, we actually thought Steven would have been a common mortal." Ianto explained. "So, thinking back about what happened with your Alice, we supposed one more was not an extremely bad idea. At least they would look out for each other if they ended up hating us."

"And let me guess, then somehow one of them got killed and '_Surprise_'?"

Ianto nodded. "Steven. Apocalyptic alien invasion, you know the drill. I don't know if we felt better for him being safe or we felt guiltier about passing down the curse to them."

"But how? My Alice is a normal child…"

"I think it was mostly because you bore them, but we don't know much of it. Being inside of you for so long might have made them take in some of the vortex… Or maybe it was because you died when you were pregnant both of times. There's a chance that such an event could have made the vortex react and that bought them back to life along with you."

"I couldn't survive nine months without being killed, huh?" Jack laughed, finally giving up and accepting his future. "That's so me…"

"Yeah, but we love you for that."

Jack and Ianto stared at each other, uncertainties filling their eyes as they both realised what was going to happen.

"We should go." Ianto concluded after a while.

"Yeah you should." Jack nodded half-heartedly.

Steven opened the Vortex Manipulator wrapped around his wrist, pressed a couple of buttons and crossed the wires of the now inert magnet. "We can harness the lingering energy, but we'll have to be quick or else we will need to go back to the hub to transport this many of us."

Mark and Alice joined him inside the circle, but Ianto, after a quick glance to them, rushed back to Jack.

"I'll come back to you, believe me…"

Jack nodded, but he couldn't bear Ianto's eyes on him anymore and looked away.

"How can I go back to my normal life after this? After knowing how it is having you back and knowing about-" His words were interrupted by Ianto's soft lips on his own. It was sweet and needy, searching for forgiveness more than lust. Jack opened his mouth and let his lover give him all he could.

Tongues entwined in a mad dance of give and take, as Jack tried to make the most of out of that single kiss.

When he was almost out of breath and felt Ianto retreating from the kiss, a single pill fell down his throat. He swallowed mechanically, and took a couple of steps away from his lover.

"I'm sorry." Ianto replied unsure.

"You retconed me…" Along with the realization of what had just happened mounted his rage, as he reached out for the other man gripping his shoulders in a firm grip. "You can't retcon me! Please don't, at least leave me the memories of you until you're back!"

Ianto caressed his face, taking in Jack's already tired features and unfocused eyes.

"You won't forget everything. You will just remember a blurry mix of feelings." As Jack lost balance and fell on his knees on the ground, Ianto followed him down and took his face in his hands.

"And for you to know, I'll lie to you. I finished my researches… Steven and Alice won't last more than a couple hundred years. I'm sorry for being a coward, but I love you too much to hurt you like that."

Jack's eyes were heartbroken, as they closed against his will and he swayed dangerously.

"Focus on the feelings, Jack. Those will let you know that Gwen and Rhys will say the truth when they will explain everything! Are you listening to me? Jack!"

Jack's head fell back, and Ianto had to grab him quickly to prevent that the sleeping captain fell and hurt himself. He laid him gently on the ground, bending over him for a last kiss before getting back on his feet and joining the rest of the team.

His lips were quivering, his eyes veiled with tears and his heart tore apart, knowing he had betrayed and left alone his lover once again. He knew this was for the best, but he truthfully hoped this really was the last time he had to do such a thing to Jack.

"Let's go." He told the others, his voice cracking and coming out deeper than he had intended. Mark, Alice and Steven simply looked at him and then at the sleeping Jack, but they didn't question Ianto's choices. With a final nod Steven pressed the ON button and suddenly around them the light blue light of the teleport energy gathered and turned yellow, making them disappear in thin air.

TBC


	6. Epilogue

Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, no copyright infringement intended. If you still want to sue first bring Ianto back to Jack.

Warnings: Spoilers for almost everything except novels and comics. Not beta-read and English's not my native language, but beta-tested anyway by SOY.

**Epilogue**

Reddish-yellow dust began gathering at the centre of the Torchwood hub in the 26th century, but before someone among the employees could go and see what was happening, a flash of energy exploded, making everyone hide behind the safe areas and cover their eyes. When the light drove out though, four fuzzy figures appeared.

As if on cue, the time-teleport tracer began blipping frenetically and Gwyneth had to run to her computer station to finally make it stop. As soon as everything was quiet again, the three youngsters of the newly teleported group stretched their limbs and made their way to their desks, whining at the thought of the reports that they had to fill, but Ianto simply stood there waiting with a thoughtful expression on his face, as he had been transfixed in the same place where he had reappeared.

Jack intercepted his children to reassure himself that they were fine, congratulated Mark on his good work in keeping all the non-immortal ones alive, and then finally placed himself right in front of his husband, expecting some sort of reaction from him. Seeing none, he decided to approach the matter from afar, trying to follow the usually successful 'Jones method'.

"We could use some coffee, Ianto."

Ianto barely acknowledged him and instead he took great care in avoiding his gaze completely.

Needless to say that the 'Jones method' never worked for him, no matter how many times he tried, so he seriously had to think about how he still tried after all those centuries to make people get his point by beginning the discussion from a completely different topic. He was beginning to suspect that the ability that made his husband's family successful with that was simply genetic.

"Yes, sir." Was all Jack could get from Ianto as an answer, until the Welshmen actually moved to the kitchen corner to get the promised coffee going. The captain followed him with his eyes, unsure about how to react to such an unexpected behaviour. He exchanged quick looks with the others, but they all shook their heads and shrugged.

Having no other options, Jack decided to follow his husband as quietly as he could. Once behind him, he tried to fold him into a sweet embrace, but all Ianto did was jump lightly at the contact and shorten the distance between himself and the coffee machine, successfully escaping Jack's hold. The captain sighed completely frustrated, giving up any pretence of subtleness to go for the more frank approach that usually served him right.

"Talk to me, Ianto. I thought we were way beyond this."

"This was _before_."

"Before what?" Jack asked plainly, his voice deep and dangerous.

Jealousy, anger, denied arousal, confusion, fear, guilt for not protecting Ianto from dying for the fifth million time. They all mixed together giving his voice an eerie inflection that cut though Ianto's façade.

Ianto turned to stare at him, nervously licking and biting his tightened lips as he fought with his own guilt in order to confront his husband.

"I _drugged_ you, Jack. I left _you_ asleep and alone in the bloody countryside. I abandoned you _again_."

Ianto _had_ to look away, feeling the remorse devouring him slowly but inevitably, even when his hands searched for the necklace under his shirt. He hoped it could give him a little more comfort, but instead a new wave of shame assaulted him and he hastily removed it and handed it back to Jack.

"You should have this back." He said, his voice breaking. "I-I ruined everything."

Jack stared at him with his mouth slightly open, realizing that no matter how much stupid the problem was in itself, for Ianto it was quite real and he had to work cautiously there.

He took a deep breath and licked nervously his lips, then he tried smiling as reassuringly he could as he took the necklace from Ianto's hands. As his lover tried to let it go though, Jack enclosed both the ring and his hand in his own.

"This is yours Ianto, and you haven't ruined a single thing. What you did today is already my past, I already told you I forgave you everything, didn't I? What we built together began from there."

"Yes, and despite what we built together until now, I did that to you!"

"You did nothing bad to me Ianto! Gwen and Rhys found me after a couple of minutes and the drug didn't erase the way you made me feel anyway. You worked years to perfection that particular amnesia pill and you did it for _me_! So that I could remember about you even if I ended up discovering more than I bargained for."

Ianto shook his head at Jack's calm words and tried to free himself from his lover's grip, but failed miserably. "If I didn't _let_ you know too much, you wouldn't have needed the retcon!"

"Then that is _my_ fault to be honest." Jack admitted in the end.

Ianto raised an enquiring eyebrow and he finally had enough courage to stare again up at Jack's hurt and guilty eyes. The captain let his hand go, taking the ring and showing it to Ianto on his open palm.

"I'm quite sure I began doubting you for the first time looking at this ring. I felt I had already seen it as soon as we had it customized, but it didn't click until now. I can easily guess what would come through my mind seeing this, and this _is _my fault, now I know, because… Well, I left it there for me to see it on purpose. I knew I would have noticed it, and…"

Jack lowered his eyes, not daring to look at his husband in the eyes as he searched the best words to put his thoughts in. "I… I just wanted my past self to take his distance from what is mine."

"Are you trying to say that you were jealous of _yourself_?" Ianto asked incredulous, a mischievous grin lighting up his eyes against his best judgement.

"I'm good enough to eat, am I?" Jack flirted, finally gaining a short lived laugh from Ianto. "A younger and more broken version of my fabulous self… I knew you wouldn't resist me."

Ianto's lips tightened in some sort of acknowledgment of Jack's words and took again the ring in his hands studying it closely.

"So you married me and gave me this ring only because you knew I would be unfaithful. That's nice to hear after five centuries of partnership and fifty years of official marriage."

Jack took Ianto's hands back in his own and waited until their eyes met before speaking again.

"Don't be silly. I know I was always supposed to set the trap _now_, I didn't _back then_! And I proposed to you to truly _prove_ to everyone that you were _way more_ than a blip in time, Ianto Jones. No matter if we have five minutes, five centuries or five billion years, I don't want you to _ever_ die doubting my love for you, _never again_. And…"

Jack had to took a deep breath, searching inside himself the courage to continue "And I'm so bad at it, Ianto. Even now that we are condemned in the same way, I fail miserably at it. I can't help it. But _this ring_, this ring is meant for _you_, so that you know _who_ bounds me to this planet or whatever colony, station or satellite we elect as our home, and that I will always come back to you, no matter where I go."

"So, what about what you just said?" Ianto asked, both glad and confused by Jack's confession.

"Well, I meant that I could have simply asked you to let me keep the ring until you came back instead of turning it in a necklace. _That_ I did on purpose, because you would have to at least be half naked to have him seeing it."

"We did nothing, Jack. We just made out, with a bit of fooling around."

"Even if you got into his pants it wouldn't matter, Ianto. I'm sure I needed that, I've always be one for physical approaches."

Ianto took his time to think about his words, and he was still staring guiltily at his ring, when Jack decided he had enough. He took the necklace and put it back forcefully around his husband's neck, but he didn't let go of it. He kept the pendant tightly in his hand and reached under his own shirt to take out the companion ring on his own necklace to let them hang one near the other.

"You think we've been cheap to recycle the same bands for our first commitment when we had the proper wedding?" Jack said with a thoughtful expression on his face and a cunning smile on his lips.

Ianto laughed, relaxing visibly, and then smirked at him as he closed the space between them.

"I didn't believe you when we did the civil partnership and I didn't believe you when you actually proposed after the children were born, so what was the point in having a new pair made? You don't do marriages."

The thoughtful expression morphed in a fake deeply offended scowl in front of Ianto's amused stare.

"Ianto Jones, how dare you not knowing that you are a man among billions. I'll let you know that no matter how much I hated the words couple, marriages, monogamy and stuff like that, whatever I can do to show you my love I _will_ do it for you."

Ianto leaned in for a quick peck on his lips and smiled at him.

"I actually think the rings were just too proper to have a new pair made."

"You remember what's written inside mine?" Jack teased, sensually tugging his husband closer so that their hips bumped together.

"Don't know the Boeshane dialect." Ianto answered lightly, trying for a deadpan even though the corner of his lips was twitching upwards against his will.

"And I don't speak Welsh…" Jack frowned. "You know I meant whether you remembered _the meaning_, not if you can read it."

Jack glared still smiling at Ianto, knowing the man was having him on, and he let his ring fall back on his chest as he let a small kiss on Ianto's one. "The man I'm coming back to."

Ianto smiled back and took Jack's ring in his hand resting his closed hand on his heart. "The man I came back for."

They rested their foreheads one against the other and kept staring at each other few more seconds before leaning in again for another heated kiss that was inappropriately interrupted by the _biip_ of the coffee machine. Jack growled, but let his husband go fetching the mugs and pour their black drug in them before it cooled down.

His eyes lit up happily though when a steaming cup of coffee was held right in front of him.

Jack took it and drank the liquid greedily, hardly containing a moan as the flavour spread in his mouth. Then he followed Ianto through half of his tour around the base to bring happiness to his co-workers, stopping right next to the stairs leading to his office.

Ianto joined him with his own mug right after he finished delivering all the others' and leaned on the rail next to Jack.

"You know," Jack said with a hint of melancholy in his voice. "While you were away I thought a lot about those four years in which you were dead. It was a really dark period for me. Like the sun had stopped shining."

He met Ianto's eyes, finding them sad and understanding even thought the Welshman was trying his best to smile at him.

"The death of a lover could do that to you." Ianto said warmly, trying to lighten up the mood, and he felt way better when Jack smiled back at him.

"Yeah, but you know what?" The captain replied, leaning dangerously in his husband personal space. "I'm happy it was just an eclipse that, yes, darkened everything, but just for a short while."

Jack embraced his husband firmly, almost as if he feared that Ianto could magically disappear if he didn't hold him tight enough.

"If my sun had stopped burning altogether this soon…" He continued with barely enough voice to be heard. "I don't know where I would be now."

Ianto felt his heart melt inside his chest and cupped his lover's face with his hands, leading the man towards him. Their lips met for a brief kiss, a sweet reminder that they were still here together, that no future of loneliness was near them at all. It soon morphed in a more passionate one, with tongues asking for access and then clashing together in a sinful dance, mirrored by quick hands intertwining in their hair and gripping pieces of clothes desperately as their mugs laid abandoned on the nearest staircase step.

When they parted, they were both flushed and out of breath, their eyes lost in one another's, as if they were trying to make sure everything was real and not an illusion.

"I should go back to work too, those files with the results of last week tests on the new planets ready for colonization won't archive themselves." Ianto said, trying to resist the urge to bring his lover into the archives with him to have the captain take him hard on his desk. It was not his fault he was married to a walking aphrodisiac after all.

"Wait a few more minutes?" Jack argued, smiling as he read clearly in his lover's face why he was so keen to go back to work. "Tosh just went to get lunch."

Ianto's brow arched in complete distrust as a frown spread on his face. "You let Toshio Harper handle the lunch? None of the men we had in the team from that family managed to be sensible when ordering."

Jack simply grinned.

"That's why I sent him to _get_ it and prohibited him to just order something in. Void travelling did nothing to Owen's genes, not even when diluted through generations."

Ianto snorted and went back to his coffee.

"At least Owen realised by himself he was a twat ordering under the name of Torchwood."

Jack laughed and made himself comfortable against the rail, as he himself retrieved his mug.

"Now you see why I hired you back then? And by the way, I know you were happy to have he and Tosh back just in time for our commitment ceremony." He drawled, poking Ianto on his shoulder.

"Might have misjudged things."

Jack laughed loudly at Ianto's uptight remark, and half chocked on his own coffee.

"Speaking about travelling…" He trailed off. "Looks like the Doctor might need my help sometime next week."

Ianto simply glared at him. "Next week. You have a meeting with UNIT representatives on Cheam. Interplanetary transplant rings any bell?"

Jack put his now empty mug aside and clapped his hands together in front of him, giving his husband a pleading look.

"Man the fort for me?"

Ianto shook his head and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

"As I always do. And _as for you_, just know that usual warnings apply," Ianto clarified with a subtle glare. His husband made him a military salute, his face the clear picture of fidelity. "And tell him that if he takes you away for more than five months like the last time, I'll drag him into a threesome."

Jack held the scowling Welshman tighter in his arms, laughing.

"I love you. And you said that same thing the last time too, but we never followed through." He pointed out light-heartedly.

Ianto raised his eyebrow in challenge. "Oh, yeah, but this last regeneration is quite good looking."

"What have I done to you." Jack said dramatically, faking exasperation.

"Ate too much 51st century guy. Something must have passed through."

"You're evil." He countered. "You fooled around with my younger self and all the while I was stuck here with Toshio preening himself! Of all the kids, you left me alone with him! You know how much he likes complaining when he doesn't get it his way."

As if on cue the alarms beeped and the cog door opened to let inside a scowling Asian looking men in his thirties. He let the bags with the take-away on the first available surface and stormed to the couple of husbands.

"So, you're back to base." Toshio said matter-of-factly, resting his hands on his hips in a way that eerily remembered them of Owen. "And I'm the only one who didn't see a single bit of 21st century."

Jack sighed. "If your identity was discovered it would have been quite difficult to explain."

"I don't look like my great-great-grandfather or great-great-grandmother or whatever they were in that century. Steven is the exact copy of Ianto and Gwyneth is the exact copy of Gwen! I've seen her photos!"

"Yes, but Gwen was alive and I was in front of them." Ianto tried to mend in without much success. "Your ancestors are still officially dead for another couple of years.".

"But-"

"Officer Harper." Jack stated in his most professional tone. "Stop complaining and bring the food in the conference room. That's an order."

Toshio scowled, but followed the orders nonetheless.

"Scary." Ianto commented with mirth when the Asian man had disappeared inside the conference room.

"Stop it." Jack warned him with a smile and a slap on the butt. "Let's go have lunch. Then we can ground Alice and Steven for dying, betting and calling me mum, and we can go back hoping that the next rift activity will give us only a couple of weevils to escort back to their new planet and not another alien invasion. We had two last month, and the fact that one was supposed to be a way of greeting doesn't mean we still didn't have to put up a fight."

Ianto considered Jack's words as he put down his own mug, shrugged and followed him upstairs.

"Just another day at Torchwood Three in the 26th century." He said with a sigh.

And there was no other place he'd rather be.

X

THE END – ECLIPSE ON THE LOST LOVERS

X

_**Thanks to all the reviewers and who favourited and followed this story!**_

A/N: The sequel will be _**Tainted Souls.**_ Even thought it will be strictly in the Torchwood-verse, some characters of the main series will be included, so you I'll probably post it as Torchwood/Dr Who crossover. I have some KKM fics to update before that, but it won't take too much to be online, because I'm almost completely satisfied with all the chapters. I _**hope you enjoyed the story**_ and that you will keep following it through the sequels!


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